Private Roleplay~ IOD

taffy789 • 23 October 2016 at 4:17 PM

“While I’m conflicted about what Management said about the veteran’s disapproval of what we’re trying to do,” the head interrogator muttered as to Raven as he led her though out the underground bunker and into the bright morning of the outside camp, “I’m grateful that you’re coming to solve this issue for us. Like I said, it-er, Five or, whatever it even is- it hasn’t been exactly happy to be strapped down.” He dropped his tone and mumbled more so to himself, “Better get everything figured out before more people get hurt, veteran be-”
The rusty, squeaking hinges of a bunker door being pushed open drowned out the rest of his words, and he led Raven into a small, cramped room with a large desk, a small humming generator, and too many bodies trying to occupy a greatly diminished amount of space.
“Oh, Juarez,” a female called out as the two entered, not looking up but instead kneeling and staring intently at the bruised knee of a male who sat making pained faces on the floor, “I checked the medical database for more files on Five, and nothing came up, sorry.”
The interrogator mimicked the displeasure in LG’s expression as he strode further inside of the small room. He stopped at the desk- which Tabs was still sitting silently, stoically behind as she focused on the laptop screen- and he picked up a thin stack of files while remarking, “We only have the one to go off of?” He gave off a disgruntled sound, “That’s strange. There really wasn’t anything else..?”
“It isn’t like a feral will know anything in those files anyway- oh, ouch!” LG exclaimed as the female healer flicked him on his kneecap and commanded him to hush up.
“Got another bruise there Laughing?” the interrogator asked, amusement dripping into his expression as he slowly thumbed through the files.
“It kicked me,” LG moaned pathetically, ruffling in his lab coat as if preening at plucked feathers, “I moved it to the interrogation room like you wanted me to, and that feral hurt me again, like I said it would. I hope you feel bad for what you caused, for not listening to me.”
“Do you really want me to give a truthful reply to how bad I actually feel?” the interrogator quipped back. Done looking through the manila folders, he rolled and popped his neck and walked back to Raven, handing the thin stack to her with a curt and professional flourish.
“You were past second division, right? So you should have at least an idea of how this goes,” the interrogator spoke smoothly, his dark eyes flitting over the assistant with a sharp scrutiny. He paused, then broke off topic to add, in a conversational off-hand, “Strange that Two promoted you to First. People have been here for months and he’d never even recognized them. I remember all the talk around the second division wing when the news of your promotion got around. It’d been awhile, and many of us assumed Two's natural strictness applied to determining merit as well-”
From across the small room, the female healer gasped out a reproaching “JUAREZ!”, realizing the implications of the interrogator’s words before they could even reach his own brain.
He flinched back as the offense dawned upon him, and quickly amended to Raven, “I didn’t mean it like that, sorry. It’s just that Two has… high standards. So much so that promotion is rare, though it’s obvious that some deserve it.” A sour note of something flavored his words bitter at best, and he crackled his knuckles again, one hand at a time, first the knuckles with the words “food” spelled out across them and then ones tattooed with “fish”.
“… Sorry, ignore me, nothing personal, I’m dealing with some things,” the interrogator muttered, and he twisted his back anxiously, popping his shoulders before tapping on the files in Raven’s hands and continuing. “Anyway. The top one here has some sample questions, basic things like ID number, base leadership, and past mission history you can ask during the interrogation. The bottom half gives some examples of personal questions to ask, things like “What’s your favorite color?” or “Favorite food?” or “What was the last thing that made you cry?”- dumb, simple, human things like that a feral might have trouble lying about. Go through the necessary top half verbatim, but feel free to get creative with the personal part. Talk to him, ask him anything you know about him, and don’t call him clear until you feel absolutely sure he’s Five and not a feral.”
He pointed to the middle file, “Take notes on this document, write down your thoughts but it’s Eighth division shredder food anyway so it ain’t that important honestly.”
His thumb brushed against the last file, “This is Five’s folder. As you can see, it’s tiny. It only contains the records we’ve kept on him here and one record sheet with some basic info that some lab sent over when they'd transferred him here a while back. Which is strange since like, those labs usually file away everything, so much so that a person can’t seem to take a crap without someone somewhere putting it down on record. But it’s all we have to go off of, so-” The interrogator puffed out a deep breath of air, “It’s all you have to cross check his answers with.”
Walking, he motioned Raven over to the desk where Tabs sat not paying an ounce of attention to either of them. “You’ll sit in the interrogation room and interrogate while we watch and listen from here. It’s safe, Five or the feral or whoever is locked up to the table with those power suppressing bracelets on, so he can’t hurt you. If anything goes wrong, we have a healer on standby and two in here ready to rush in and save you.”
“I can’t save anyone,” LG chimed in from across the room, “I’m injured myself.”
“I was talking about Tabs and I, you couldn’t save a kitten from a tree without getting stuck in it yourself,” the interrogator sighed, and at the sudden mention of her name, Tabs’ chair made a loud, discordant sound against the concrete floor as she stood up, causing the interrogator to jump backwards.
“Raven,” Tabs spoke up, solemnity and darkness swirling in her irises as she addressed the assistant. The room fell silent, all focused on Tabs, hushed by her decision to finally rouse from her vigil over the laptop.
“All that you heard was certainly incredibly important, but there’s something more important here that I have to show you.”
Her grave voice and demeanor matched the seriousness with which she turned the laptop’s screen towards Raven and hit the “play” button on the paused video stream.
A grainy feedback appeared on screen, and all gravity was broken by the head interrogator’s miffed, “Really Tabs?” when the video showed a fuzzy LG getting head butted by the body of the tied down Fifth leader.
“I’ve replayed this over about a hundred times now,” Tabs smirked, her eyes lighting up with more amusement than could possibly be healthy for her, “Isn’t this the funniest crap you’ve seen in a long time?”
“Really, really Tabs?” the interrogator intoned again, though a tug of mirth pulled the corners of his lips up against his will.
“Look,” Tabs exclaimed, slamming her palms down on the desk in a serious, down-to-business manner, “I have not spent these early morning hours putting up with the fallout of the pure, unadulterated crap that occurred yesterday to be criticized for finding humor in our camp anesthesiologist getting his skull broken in by a person who was literally strapped down-” a deep breath “-and so help me God if I can’t have this, what can I have?”
The interrogator gave a relenting shrug at this point, and from the corner of the room, LG huffed and blushed a deep red.
“Now that’s down and over with,” Tabs sighed, all emotional comedy in her fading back into passive exhaustion as she reluctantly switched the laptop’s screen to a live feed of Five’s body tugging at the cuffs attaching his wrists to a metal table.
Another tired sigh, followed by a, “Good morning Raven, it’s nice to see you up and about.”
She sat back down in her chair, a hand propping up her cheek as she mentioned, “By the way, you have Mari over there to thank for finding you, she’s one of the healers who’s better at sensing living bodies.”
Still fumbling with LG’s complaining, injured body, the healer stiffened and squeaked out a quick, embarrassed, “Oh, don’t mention it!”, flushing and diving deeper into her work to avoid meeting eye contact with Five’s assistant.
Tabs waved away the embarrassment ebbing from the girl and turned to Raven, frowning as she added, her thin mouth twisting up wistfully, “Recovering the dead bodies however, was a tougher job. All lost and buried in that final feral attack. We searched but had to give it up, given the Glaeroes that might’ve wandered back into the area. So Gavin was left to the worms. It’s a shame, honestly.”
She grew sullen, quiet, and her dark eyes drifted to the wood of the desk as she tapped impatiently on its surface, “But you’re not here to listen to my mission report, though feel free to pull it out of some unimportant Eighth file cabinet later.” She scoffed at her own words, apparently embittered, “You’re here to make sure Fiver is himself in there. Shouldn’t be too hard, I feel confident you’re up to it.”
Tabs hummed, meeting the assistant’s eyes and raising her eyebrows to ask a question, “You have any last concerns that you needa address?”

asi • 25 October 2016 at 7:29 AM

Caught up in her own thoughts, Raven didn't respond to those of the interrogator's as they walked, and they were there soon enough as it was.
She crammed into the space with the rest, jammed for a second up against the wall until they wrestled the door closed, and then Raven could squeeze in further into the remaining space.
From all the activity and simple existence of so many breathing bodies, be they organic or mechanical, the small room had grown to be quite stifling. Had Raven had any excess layers of clothing on her, she would have had to shed them, but as she was, she was comfortable. She did, however, spare a moment for thoughts of thin white blouses, those which would inevitably betray the slightest hint of sweat beneath it. She muttered a quick prayer of thanks for her lazy wardrobe choice that morning.
Raven let the initial exchange pass her by without comment. Everyone here seemed familiar with each other, and she apparently went without introduction- she felt a bit out of the loop, but picked up on the thing of importance- that being Zach's disappointing lack of records. It didn't seem surprising her that it was small, since the guy would naturally avoid incident reports wherever his power could help him...
She also absorbed the information that Five as apparently well enough to injure people, and that if she made a similar misstep allowing that to happen to her, the amount of sympathy she'd get from her current compatriots would probably be quite small. Raven dutifully noted the need for precaution.
Then she silently accepted the stack of papers, slightly unexpected though it was. By the time Second Division came up, churning brain was quickly cottoning on to what exactly they intended to have her do. For some reason, Raven hadn't imagined having to actually interrogate Five... She'd sort of had the vague idea in her head she'd just be able to point at some grainy camera feed and declare, 'Yes, that is unmistakably the Five I know, and hate.' She should've known better, but she'd never exactly seen anyone tested for feralism before-
The head interrogator was suddenly saying something about her being promoted, and Raven looked up from the folders she'd been given, hazel eyes darkening under her frown.
The man was even interrupted before Raven had begun to prepare her words in response, and so she waited to see how that would play out...
When he promptly apologized, she snorted. "Okay. Sounds like a conversation to be taken up with Two. Although now Nine's in charge of Punishment & Interrogation, maybe the division's workers will be better evaluated. Still, I think I could pass the criticism on..." She contemplated telling Two-immune Riley and getting him to do it, just because it tickled her dark sense of humor. Though Raven wasn't sure she wanted her friend any closer to that fearsome figure. Maybe she'd weigh up the pros and cons later.
The fact of the matter was, Raven had her own doubts and insecurities about the manner in which she'd been promoted, to both First and assistant, without a corresponding résumé of achievements on her part. Her deficiencies also had to be known. Had it all been Two's work, or was maybe another power responsible? If she wanted to know, that probably WOULD have to be taken up with the acting general.
But the files in her hands reminded her that now was not the time for that.
She listened attentively to the briefing. With a slightly nervous edge, Raven remembered it had been rather a long while since that introductory course she'd had to take. That single three hour workshop when she'd first joined, actually. Before the whole rebel debacle... The better part of a year ago.
Raven's experience in this department was absolutely lacking. She had never conducted an interview herself, let alone taken the torturer's bar, the prerequisite psych eval test of Two's design that was said to be notoriously- and nauseatingly) difficult. Raven had a couple of times sat in on a disciplinary case... But only because her department had been enforcement. That meant most of the time, she'd been security, either guarding, or policing, or.... Cleaning. Everyone in Second Division spent a disproportionate amount of time cleaning. Her memories stank of bleach and detergent. On the outside, Raven's scowl deepened with every passing thought in her head.
Especially when, despite her acknowledged inexperience in this area, she registered just how stupid those questions were. They had an eerie similarity to the trivia she'd asked the power in question not so long ago, and- Raven held her tongue, but just barely.
The point about the lab was at least interesting, but it meant very little to her. As soon as the head interrogator- Juarez, apparently- concluded his spiel, she thanked him briefly and was about to demonstrate her profound confidence in the team's saving ability by heading in already, but Tabs preempted her.
Raven's patience, which had been strained throughout this entire procedural ordeal, seemed to go quite limp at the solemnity Tabs invoked, and Raven had all but resigned herself to death by red tape when the video played.
On seeing the footage however, Raven's eyes brightened about ten shades, enough to rival the shining joy in Tabs' at others' embarrassment and pain.
Right then and there, she was so, so ready to announce that, 'Yes! That is unmistakably the Five I know, and... Reluctantly like'.
Because unless she'd grossly misjudged the character of Zach's power, or he'd been playing her the entire time, there was no way that guy was going to use a damaging move like a headbutt for anything shorter than a threat of maiming... Unless there was like, a spider in the neighborhood.
Raven squinted at the blurry image on screen. The room looked clean...
However, that wouldn't convince anyone in this room. She needed credibility, and it was obvious by all the instructions and resources given to her what they expected. Raven was going to have to perform.
And she was going to do it for real, too. Because while Raven didn't particularly have any moral qualms about what she was going to tell this lot here, she did want to know for sure herself, if she could be sure herself, what she was dealing with... Because whatever kind of power-dar she'd thought she'd had, it had clearly NOT lived up to her expectations when buried in a dark hole under an avalanche of rock. Since you know, the power had kind of gotten close enough to make out with, and also hypothetically kill her, whilst escaping her detection.
No matter how she looked at it, that was downright embarrassing. Raven would be a fool if she didn't seize this opportunity to sharpen her skills.
She finally spoke up again, responding in kind to Tabs, "Hey, good morning to you too. And Mari." Raven turned to the girl. "Thanks for saving his and my asses," she jerked a finger towards the screen. "And also, last night," she added a little more softly, glancing towards the other healer as well. She'd been too dazed last night to thank them properly, but; "I really do appreciate it."
Actually, while she was at it, Raven sucked it up and addressed the whole crew. "Look. We had a tough run of it yesterday. First day on the job for me and Five and things went to suck. Everyone had to work hard but you guys really pulled through for us. When we're done here, I'll see if there's something I can do to get the veteran to cut you all some slack, alright?" Raven didn't want to think about the dead now, only the living, so she simply finished with that, and a short nod in hopes of gaining their approval.
Such pleasantries out of the way, she dismissed the need for last questions and went for the door into the other room, eager to get this done. Raven paused on the door handle, taking the opportunity for a few last words.
"Hey, Tabs, do me a favor would you? Add that clip to the 'All-Times' reel if you've got one. Wouldn't mind seeing it again later, with some godawful chiptune soundtrack," she gave them all a little flick of a salute before she ducked into the room, armed with superfluous papers and ready to blow this case wide open with... Excruciating slowness and meticulousity.

taffy789 • 25 October 2016 at 9:38 PM

“That clip isn’t going anywhere, trust me” Tabs promised Raven, nodding to her as the assistant entered the interrogation room and closed the door behind her.
Speaking up louder than LG’s immediate protesting of Tab’s decision, the head interrogator turned to Tabs with a sharp urgency. “Tabs. She left before we could tell her about the last item on the list.”
Tabs considered it for a moment, blinking, before she gave a small, unconcerned shrug. “I don’t think it’ll be that big of an issue, don’t worry Juarez.”
Despite the reassurance, the head interrogation frowned, unconvinced.


Zach was in the middle of trying and failing to slip his hands from out of the tight metal cuffs, cursing up a storm all the while when the door creaked open.
He lifted his head up, his expression twisting up unpleasantly on instinct, fully expecting that labcoat from before to come waltzing in and-
Huh.
Seeing his assistant, that was a dull surprise.
Considering the reversal of expectation, Zach waited for a comment from Egos, but felt no sharp, unwelcomed intrusion prodding against his thoughts. The power suppressing bracelets seemed to muzzle the snake, most likely due to how his power no long had any basis for his smug predictions.
While he detested the cuffs restraining them, even Zach had to recognize the one good thing that came from this crappy, annoying as heck situation.
Zach tried to leave the memory of his power’s grating voice behind him, which was annoyingly difficult considering the topic of previous conversation that had just opened the door.
The seriousness with which Raven swept into the room was not lost on the leader, and that coupled with his assistant’s mere presence and Egos’ echoing insistence from before and the smallness of the interrogation room and a multitude of other sensory inputs that sent his brain racing and running farther than his body could ever- it all combined did nothing to help the taut anxiety building up in every muscle, collecting and straining and pushing until-
Zach closed his eyes, took a deep, long breath, and when he opened his eyelids again it would be a mistake not to see the wild, dark and frantic stirrings swirling about in his near mask of a blank expression.
“Look Raven,” he croaked out, the bruise on his collarbone throbbing as he addressed her, “I don’t care why you’re here. I don’t care what you have to do. Just do it and tell those idiots keeping me here to let me go already.”
Despite the tightness coiling around his voice, all his usual harsh crudeness was diminished by the sheer exhaustion dragging down every word.


Quincy stiffened at that sly smile, but when the expression disappeared into a now stark and noticeable impassivity, his own face twisted up as he was left feeling… incredibly frustrated.
How dare Izzy, really, leaving him out in the cold like that, like throwing a bucket of ice water suddenly over his head?
Quincy squirmed in his seat at the unfairness of it all, how quickly Izzy could switch gears so seamlessly, without any trouble at all, while on the other hand he was left, stuck sitting with only one really persuasive train of thought running down the tracks of his mind…
But then Izzy pressed up against his side and all previous offensives were quickly forgotten and forgiven.
“Sick, huh?” Quincy muttered, concern welling at the pained dip of his boyfriend’s eyebrows. He allowed his hand to slip around Izzy’s waist, and he was about ask what he could do to help when the rumbling of a stomach caught him off guard.
He pulled his hand out from around his boyfriend’s waist.
“Sick and hungry?” Quincy’s eyes flittered to the untouched tray on the table, and he said while digging a protein bar from his pockets, “I can fix one of those things, uh, kinda. You okay with fakey yogurt bars?” He placed the protein bar on the table and pushed it and the extra milk carton both towards Izzy, saying, “That’s all I got, sorry babe.”
He took extra care to push the food items around the sketchbook Izzy was mapping on, as to not risk getting any pages wet from the condensation dripping off of the cold milk carton.
That being done, Quincy allowed his gaze to linger on the drawings. He noted the admirable effort and concentration his boyfriend was putting into his work, and despite even knowing this, Quincy couldn’t feel an ounce of bad for resolving to do everything in his power to turn Izzy’s attention back to him.
“Hey, if you’re feeling that bad though, babe,” Quincy began, pressing closer still against the other boy, “Mikey’s working like, all day today.” To accentuate his words, his leaned in and turned his head sideways, breathing warm air against his boyfriend’s ear, “So if you wanna place to rest, my room’ll be empty~”
He gave a smile and glided a quick hand across Izzy’s thigh, being sure to ironically add in a mutter, “and, you know, I might join y-”
A familiar visage caught in the corner of his lidded eyes violently murdered the rest of that thought, and Quincy instead coughed, startled, before flushing and hastily retracting completely from the other boy.
He brought his hand resting against his cheek and leaned forward on the table, still coughing periodically as if he was choking to death on his own surprise.


At the other end of the cafeteria, Annabell’s distinctive blonde hair flipped as she turned away from the lunch line, a full tray clutched tightly in her hands.
“Look, my point is,” she chided Riley, “I would rather have every single one of these cafeteria workers to know your face than for them to say they’ve never seen you around here in their life.”
That being said, the girl sighed and began to search for an empty table.
Having worked herself up by leading Riley to the cafeteria and fretting over his poor eating habits, all Annabell really wanted to do was sit down, enjoy her food, and then painfully relive those embarrassing moments where she’d been tricked by a murderous five-year old.
As she glazed her vision over the tables available, she noticed a familiar person leaning forward against the table and pointedly trying not to make eye contact with her but still looking over and..?
Oh.
A frazzled feeling of awkward indecision shook through her as her and Quincy made direct eye contact. And now, having both acknowledged each other’s presence, it wasn’t as if she could just… walk past his basically empty table and pretend she hadn’t saw him. It was basic social etiquette that she had to go set her tray down and make small talk, even if her and Riley had been planning on discussing moments… she would’ve rather not wanted a multitude of people to hear about, if possible.
Ugh. Annabell could’ve head desked into her food, because of course today just had to be that awkward. Really, on a second thought, she should’ve just had stayed in bed.
Turning away from the staring Quincy, Annabell turned around and looked towards Riley, waiting for his suggestion on how to proceed from there.

asi • 29 October 2016 at 1:26 AM

There was a moment, when Raven walked into that room, where something buckled and fell off-kilter. The exact second it happened was easy enough to pinpoint. Her foot midair at the height of its arch and Five had looked up to meet her eyes. It came as sudden as a knife might pierce an unsuspecting someone in the back, and left just as quickly the moment her leading foot touched the ground.
There was an unpleasant aftermath in her mind, like the off-tune twang a snapped guitar string might leave reverberating in the air, and it felt off.
Accrediting it to a simple disorientation by way of the change of temperature between the rooms, Raven didn't allow herself a falter in her brisk steps or steady expression, but quickly settled into position in the seat opposite the captive Zach.
She shuffled the folders briefly, then placed them on the table, splayed out in front of her as if to show all her cards. Then her gaze rose to his eyes once again and Raven was perhaps surprised to see something so unbridled there in the darkness.
She frowned as he spoke, each word steeped in fatigue to such an extent that the first few seconds were actually painful to listen to. And she sighed at his grumpy and apathetic idea of cooperation.
"Calm down, Zach," Raven advised him, quiet but with some potency behind it. She had never been very good at soothing, wasn't even sure if she was capable of it, but giving a stable presence was something she could aim for. "Would you expect anything less from me?"
She focused on her fingertips while they worried at the corner of the question file- noticing the pale dirt stuck under the nails from yesterday- and then flipped it open to the first page. "Just answer their questions and you'll be done. Then you can leave and get some real rest," Raven cleared her throat, eyes lingering on the black smudges under his eyes that seemed to have worsened every night she'd known the guy. But it was probably for the best that they did this while he was in this condition- it would make it much harder for a power to fool her, that was the obvious advantage.
And it seemed like the veteran in charge was totally cool with the idea of letting Zach off the work hook today, so she didn't see any reason why, as soon as they were done here, she couldn't send him straight off to bed.
"Alright? Let's see..." Raven leafed through the question booklet with a bored expression on her face. "You remember your number, right, Five?" she said whilst staving off a smirk.


A light smile, which had sunk into his cheeks while Izzy was basking in the warmth his boyfriend provided, evaporated as soon as Quincy pulled away. The cafeteria felt drafty and cold in its absence and Izzy frowned his discomfort, at least until he was presented with the... Alternate breakfast.
Izzy stared, fixated upon the two items so carefully placed to the left of his work for the better part of the minute, before sighing. He picked up the bar by the wrapper's end in a similar fashion to the way one might an unfamiliar lizard by the tip of its tail. "Thanks," he murmured, clasping it now in both hands, though he made no move to open it.
What Izzy really wanted was that wonderful warmth back- and he got it! What's more, he almost leaped at the offer to go back to Quincy's room. However...
When his warmth was so cruelly stolen from him the second time, Izzy was ready to violently murder whoever was responsible for disturbing his boyfriend so- until he realized it was the rest of his team.
... And yet the wish was pervasive. He fidgeted in his seat and tried to pull his beanie down further over his head. But it was no good. With a crushing sense of doom, Izzy saw that the two of them were heading right their way.


"That would be fine," Riley was saying with a slight furrow between his brows as a heap of suspicious white sauce was finally dumped atop his salad, and he could join Annabell outside of the lunch queue, staring with only mild concern at the contents of his plate. "But around here, people seem to need to make an honest effort to try to remember my face..."
He wore a helpless expression, looking down and trying to reconcile anything on his plate with anything truly familiar, and failing, save for the salad. Though its color, too, was a bit off. Needlessly to say, he quickly forsook his efforts to muster any kind of appetite, deciding to simply join Annabell at her table and force it all down-
When he looked up and saw she hadn't got a table yet, but was instead taking part in a strange silent stare-off with a current occupant of one... Oh, wait! That was the guy from their mission yesterday! Er, Quince, Quincy, that was his name! And he didn't hesitate a second to exclaim this to Annabell as if she hadn't already noticed. "Hey look, it's that guy from yesterday! Quincy!" he said, and then waved.
Directly following that, Riley also had no reservations about heading directly over to his table, smiling affably all the way.
Just as he approached, however, the other one at the table stood up abruptly, with a harsh scraping of their chair, and snatched up the untouched lunch tray on the table.
"I'm returning this," Izzy announced shortly, before stalking away.

demon • 29 October 2016 at 2:37 AM

"Oh, it's you," were the first thoughtless things to fall out of her mouth, along with a yawn, as Xela opened the door to find a face she recognized waiting there.
They smiled, lifting up some of the gloom that had settled just under their eyes since the previous night. "Hi, Xela." James shuffled their feet a little, glancing past her into the room. "Hope you're feeling well this morning," they said politely, but with such sincerity that she could only assume that they genuinely wished the best for her.
"I'm fine, what are you doing here?" she asked, feeling confident enough in their good will to let her hands busy themselves fixing her wet hair. It was her own first attempt at a twisted side-braid Alex knew, honestly the most elegant thing she'd ever learned, that held everything nicely above her nape.
"I'm-" They were leaning now, trying to get a good look in, and Xela frowned and stepped forward, prompting them to retreat in a small way. "Ah, sorry. I'm looking for Septa," they explained, pulling their long shirt down nearly to their knees. This time it was blasting another black and white band promotion, with the title 'Orange Goblin,' in script above something with tentacles. "He's missing."
Xela nodded, "Well, I don't know where he is. Wait, missing? It's still early," she brought an eyebrow up for this. From what she knew of human society, you weren't supposed to file a missing person's report for three days. They'd been hanging out just last night-
"It's been over an hour and no one knows where he is," James blurted out and she did a double take.
"An hour?" Xela couldn't suppress her incredulity.
But the other mistook the meaning behind her disbelief. "I know, right?! Sometimes we misplace him for twenty odd minutes, but he usually makes himself known after that with some grand prank or show..."
Xela said bluntly, "Are you his stalker?" and the kid immediately stopped talking, pale peppermint eyes going wide.
"Did he tell you he has a stalker? Do you know who it might be?" they grabbed her arm and clutched it intensely, looking both ready to rip it off at her elbow and cry into her shoulder.
"Yeah, it's you," she accused, looking equally alarmed, but both less angry, more confused, and much more prone to lasers coming out of her eyes than tears.
"What? Oh," they released her arm and took another step back, again looking apologetic. "No, we keep track of Septa at his own request," they explained sheepishly, scratching at some of the ink on their arm. They had a few small tattoos, Xela realized, that she hadn't noticed last night. "It's a lot of work, but it allows us to keep him from causing too much trouble."
She raised the other brow this time.
They chuckled lightly, looking away. "Pffft, yeah... We call it damage control..." They admitted in a murmur.
She groaned, massaged her temples. "It's too soon for this, after last night."
They followed the motion with sympathetic eyes. "Headache?"
"I guess," she allowed, heading back into her room to fetch her only known remedy for the ailment in question, although she lacked the tablets typically taken with it... After a second, James followed her in, glancing curiously towards the snoring bed, but not being nosy enough to investigate or stare.
As she sipped on the cool drink, they explained the course of action that had brought them there. It seemed Septa had spent the night at James' place- how that had occurred, Xela had no idea, not after seeing how handsy he had been with Bree yesterday- but had left early that morning after calling for accompaniment. Which was apparently his norm.
Xela was starting to think this whole shadowing thing was just a ploy on Septa's part to cultivate constant attention. She drank faster and swallowed a bit too much at once, spluttering.
At this point James was too distracted to offer any concern. They were saying; "Molly!" They muttered something under their breath Xela didn't understand, then warned, "Don't talk to me about Molly."
Xela... Agreed not to talk to them about this person, as long as James would get on with it. They told of how they'd gone to Septa's office, where he'd sorted through team dispatch documents for a good two hours-
"Is that normal?" Xela interjected skeptically.
"Um, no," they amended, waving their hands in a pacifying manner. "I didn't mean that he personally went through them. He normally gets his assistant to do it for him while he plays 'Candy Crush' and just hears what he needs. Apparently he made some changes, and that's unusual-"
Xela had to prompt them to get back on track a second time.
James paused, sighed, then said succinctly; "And his tail lost track of him after a bathroom stop. We checked all his regular places, and then I just thought he'd taken to coming here lately without accompaniment, so he might've forgotten to dismiss-"
There was a shifting from the forgotten corner of the room, and Xela and James both turned to watch Cindy extricating herself gently from the bed. Even in the dim light, it was obvious how rumpled her powder-snow hair was, that make-up on at least one cheek had rubbed off during the night, and that her silky smart clothes were creased beyond belief. Once Guithe was determined to be still sleeping snugly, she made her way over. The bona fide woke-up-like-this Cindy strode towards them, even smiling in a way that was quite unlike anything Xela had seen from yesterday... Until she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Cindy gasped, patted herself down in a moment of what looked like horrified denial, before she turned tail and fled into the en-suite bathroom.
A call of, "Wait!" issued from the thereafter bolted door, followed by emissions of several small 'clunks', and the sound of running water.
"Aw, you had Antonia over," James remarked as an aside to Xela as the two of them both stared towards the bathroom.
"... What?" was Xela's delayed response, causing them to withdraw the cute smile they'd been wearing and look over at their host in bemusement.

taffy789 • 29 October 2016 at 10:29 AM

The fly buzzed softly, its movement prominent and audible as it attempted and failed to find a way out of the darkened tent.
The sun had not yet risen over the desert; darkness still shrouded over the sands and bathed them in moonkissed blackness. This darkness crept under the flaps of the tent as stealthy as a stalking sand cat, swallowing any and all items it managed to touch.
The fly hummed in and out of the shadows, not minding if the blackness ate it or not, unconcerned all the same.
Lying on his cot, his slim figure obscured under the bug net, Naji lay with eyes closed and wished he could do the same- fly easily into the night, relax and let it consume him whole, swallow him up so he was never seen again.
The fly grew noisier in its mission, growing louder, closer still until all humming ceased with finality.
Naji opened his eyes a crack.
The fly crawled silently along the dips in his bug net, stirring with noise only periodically, as if singing to itself as it walked.
Frowning and closing his eyes again, Naji shifted to his side, scaring the fly off the net and sending it up, up back again into the air to tirelessly search for another place to rest its weary wings.
He really should get up soon.
Naji knew this, that he had to get ready, to begin the day.
He knew his responsibilities, where and when he had to be, what he had to do, and why and how he would do them.
He knew all these things, yet his eyes remained closed- refusing to open more than a crack, for if they opened any more, then he’d surely would be obliged to act awake.
He did not want to be awake.
The fly stopped buzzing, having landed another place far away- maybe even having escaped the tent.
Naji tried to drift back off into a land of dreams, but it was impossible, just as impossible as it was all those hours ago when he’d awoken from his fainting spell to hear Samuel and Jorge arguing about him.

“He’s going to die.”

Had been what Samuel had spoken, had been the first grave words he’d heard upon awakening,
“Those idiots are going to get him killed. He can’t go off with them. There has to be a way to get him out of it.”
“Sammy-” Jorge had sighed, reluctant, resigned, sad- “we tried to talk to the Chief Velazquez, and that was a total bust. There’s no way to get him out of it without it ending up with all of us in some serious trouble.”
“Okay, but why are we listening to what that jerk said?” Samuel snapped back, “you were there with me, you heard his lousy reasoning! Why send somebody who sucks at healing to go learn while under fire? He’s not trying to help Naji, he’s trying to get him killed!”
“…I know dude, I know. But we’re not Naji’s boss, or the admins that approved the team change. So. What can we do about it..?”
Silence.
Naji hated the silence that followed the blunt of the arguing.
It made him sick to his stomach, made butterflies flutter from his gut up through his esophagus, and made his head twang with bitter memories best left unremembered.
The silence pulled him close to himself, pulled him into his own mind and twisted his body until he was six again and pretending to sleep as his parents argued one room over.
They argued in a language he no longer spoke, that he was afraid to speak, that they were fighting over him not wanting and being afraid to speak.
His father drove most of the shouting, raising his unsympathetic voice to tell his wife that, no, no son of his was going to play mute in his mother tongue just because he lived in fear of the teasing kids at school.
His mother played the more lenient, rationalized part.
Yes, she’d argued, their son was scared now, but certainly the fear wouldn’t last forever. Let him hold his tongue for a while, for it was a phase that he’d certainly outgrow given time.
After ten years came and went, Naji couldn’t form a proper sentence in Urdu if somebody was holding a gun to his head.
He’d thought about this incident as he’d used the lull in Samuel and Jorge’s arguing to return to a fitful sleep, and he thought about it again now, while lying awake in bed and being too chicken to open his eyes and face the day.
He thought about courage, about bravery- about all those great, mushy feelings people stronger than him had that made them able to get up each morning despite everything weighing down upon them.
He thought about getting up from bed.
He didn’t though, for he was scared.
Because that was what it all came down too, all his problems stemmed from his own inability to fight his fear.
Naji turned again, his bug net shifting with him as he moved to lay on his other side.
It wasn’t as if he wanted to be afraid, he reasoned to himself, no, he had a long list of fears and it often felt as if being afraid ranked first above all else.
But everything frightened him, everything about his situation swallowed him whole and chewed him up and spat him back out and then swallowed him again, and it left Naji grasping for any small moment of respite so he could stop and breath.
A moment like that never arrived, and the dragging fear was all that was left, curling around him like a malignant creeping darkness and waiting under the bed to pull him under as soon as his feet touched the tent’s floor.
He was afraid of so, so much.
IOD. The Falchions. The war. Death. Dying. Dying on his mission. Those brainwashed kids. Chief Velazquez. Paola. Scorpions hiding in his boots when he went to put them on. Getting cancer from sunburn. Not living long enough to even worry about developing cancer from a sunburn. Injury. Blood. Healing. Chief Velazquez again because, wow was the malicious glint in that guy’s eye terrifying. Being in charge of saving people. Being expected to save people. Being expected to kill. Killing. His power.
A bile rose in Naji’s stomach but instead of shooting up from his throat it sat there and bubbled, leaving him feeling empty and hallow and leaving only one outlet for the uprising of emotion to explode from. Grabbing and pressing his cot’s sheet tightly against his eyelids, Naji stifled the louder sobbing squeaks and allowed the thin cotton material to soak up the tears that slipped out from his clenched eyelids.
Crying was pathetic, he knew, and with every sniffle he wished he could be stronger, be a better, different person than the one he currently was. So desperately did he wish his courage could pierce the foggy future awaiting ahead like a cutting spotlight and guide him forward through his own fears and insecurity. And if he could not have blazing courage, then he would even settle for a bright ignorance, for then he could at least rush forward into the black unknown as if it held a sunny fate, like the brainwashed kids seemed apt to do, like if everything actually had a chance at turning out okay.
But Naji wasn’t brainwashed, and he could see the empty black hole pulling him to the end as plain as day, he couldn’t fool himself into thinking it was anything different, and he certainly couldn’t will his frozen feet to charge valiantly to the finality that was surely awaiting his arrival.
Fight, resist, scream, cry, argue, stand like a statue in shock- no matter what he did, Naji knew he was going to die, and despite his utter resignation, he still couldn’t face fate with a brave face.
An alarm pierced the quiet, the beeping loud and vibrant and emitting from somewhere around his wrist. Naji’s eyes involuntarily opened in time to catch a glimpse of the awoken fly zooming right over him and out of his field of vision.
Groaning quietly, Naji wiped away the remaining moisture from his eyelashes, rose his wrist level to his nose, and turned off the alarm screaming from his watch. He lay in his cot for a few seconds longer, breathing deeply and ignoring the harsh buzzing of the fly still trapped somewhere in the tent. It was a slow, painful process, but Naji willfully gathered all the tiny shards of whatever courage he had and mentally prepared himself for the most excruciating part of arriving to the end.
Beginning it.
Pulling his bug net from around himself, he swung his feet to the floor, his toes skirting the shadows lingering near his cot.
Then, breathing in a deep gulp of air, Naji stood up.

awesomeness • 30 October 2016 at 9:07 PM

At Raven’s request for him to calm down, Zach squinted his eyes and stared through his assistant, searching for any hint, any sign, any reason allowing him to expect any less from her. Malice, plotting, or even a disgusting enraptured fascination with his condition as that lab coat had- he probed for it all but came up empty.
Satisfied Raven wouldn’t take advantage of his cuffed hands and slam his face into the desk, Zach visibly unbristled some, his spine relaxing in the uncomfortable chair but his wrists still irritably, unconsciously rubbing raw against the cuffs holding them down.
Silent as he watched Raven fiddle around with the folders, Zach kept his guard up but allowed himself to take a greater interest in the interrogation he was forced to be a part of.
Hearing the first question lobbed his way, however, his eyebrows bent inwards, confused and exasperated, and he remarked sourly, “What the heck kind of question is that? Is that crap supposed to prove anything but me having eyes to look at the tattoo on my arm?” He snorted, “Of course my number’s five,” followed by an annoyed eye roll.
“And if the rest of this little interrogation is going to be like this then, please Raven," he rasped out in that scratchy, cracking voice, “feel free to leave right now and go tell those idiots on the other side of the door to come in and kill me now.”


At Riley’s large wave of his hand and loud exclamation, Quincy’s embarrassed, shifty expression grew into a sheepish one as he straightened his back and extended his finger outwards and in as a quick greeting.
Then, as the Fourth leader and the Annabell girl approached, Izzy curtly stood up and stormed away looking vexed, and Quincy frowned unhappily at the empty seat his boyfriend left. Quincy suppressed a sigh and wondered if Izzy would make another appearance before the two left to put away their own trays. Sure, Izzy had left his sketchbook, but Quincy could very well foresee a future in which his boyfriend hid out behind the lunch line until the coast was clear…
Either way, Quincy focused on sending a welcoming smile towards his fellow team members, all the while regretting not pulling Izzy back to his room as soon as he’d recognized him sitting alone in the cafeteria.
“Hey, guys,” he nodded as Riley and Annabell slid into the seats across from him, “What have you guys been up to?” He skimmed quickly over their expressions, looking for signs of tiredness or pain and only recognizing glimpses of it in Annabell’s slight, exhausted frown.
“…Both of you guys been feelin’ okay, after yesterdays…. Er, fun?” He added the last part sardonically, giving a shrug of his shoulders like he didn’t even know how to properly address what occurred the day before.

asi • 2 November 2016 at 9:12 PM

"Oh, nothing much," Riley answered vaguely, he too stealing a glance at Annabell's slightly more rumpled expression. It seemed a bit... Immodest, to talk like yesterday hadn't tired him out, when it seemed to have done a number on everyone else in his team. So he just smiled and said; "It's still early hours yet."
He skewered some salad leaves on his fork with only a little hesitance even while the strange pale sauce dripped off of it in mushy clumps. That, however did cause him to grimace, feeling that his stomach was so far from growling, it might just turn over and go back to sleep. Maybe its snores could be mistaken for the appropriate noise...
Riley distracted himself from this and his commitment to eating by continuing the conversation. "I'd call it something more like chaos," he admitted, dropping his fork to retrieve the papers he'd stuffed in his messenger bag earlier. "Anyway, today should be better, I mean for starters we just have to report on everything that happened yesterday. Would you mind-?" Riley gestured towards the drawing papers already taking up space on the table, indicating for Quincy to clear them.


Izzy sighed himself back into the cool press of the wall behind him, sensed only dully through his clothes. Still he felt acutely that it was a touch nothing but dissimilar to Quincy's embrace of just moments ago. It was pouring salt on rubbed raw wounds but stubborn Izzy did it anyway. Like how he'd pushed his way behind the serving counter and into the staff area despite knowing nothing good should come of it, since he didn't work there any longer. Izzy felt silly to be missing Truce already, it was barely a few days past... But he did.
He nearly jumped out of his skin when someone came up suddenly on his left. "What are you- oh, Izzy! You're back," and out of nowhere, he was squished against a warm, cushy stomach, thick arms wrapped around his waist, and her face nestled in the hollow of his neck. Somehow the lunch lady managed to be even shorter than Izzy himself.
"Took you long enough," she mumbled lowly, sound muffled by the cloth of his cardigan. He held himself awkwardly for a moment, both hands busy holding his lunch tray in front of him while his side was 'attacked'.
Izzy couldn't push himself away so he clumsily stumbled out of it, and if his skin weren't so tan it would have been flushed with rising annoyance. "Florie!"
"What?" she snapped back, arms crossed and eyes narrowing at the resistance to her rare and prized hugs. "Am I not allowed to miss you now huh?"
"I was lit'rally here yesterday," he was fuming quietly about the fact that her careless ambush had nearly cost him his tray, and his cardigan had they collided.
The stout lunch lady huffed, "You left without even making up with me-"
"Oh I wasn't aware I had to!" he growled at her, and they remained in a stand-off until she threw her arms up in the air.
"Whatever! In that case, aren't you back way too early then? What are you even doing here..." Florence rolled her eyes before they focused on the tray he clutched tightly. "Ha! You think I'm going to give you anything better than that? As if," she scoffed heartlessly.
Izzy was prepared to march off in a temper until he heard that and stopped. "Don't need it! My boyfriend got me breakfast," he told her saltily, and she gasped.
"You- you made up with him?" her disbelief was rather cutting, and he would've winced had he thought it less deserved.
Izzy just gave a sort of shrug-nod before she rushed off to peer over at the tables with her own eyes, and confirm that Quincy was indeed sitting there, with Izzy's sketchbook- and Four and a girl too.
"Oh Dizzy-Izzy I'm so proud of you," she chattered excitedly while he pulled her away from the counter, and the path of the harried-looking servers as the breakfast line began to gain steam.
He just shook his head at his friend's wild antics and decided to say nothing of what had actually happened. "Ok but don't call me that and can I get back to them now?" Izzy gestured reluctantly at the group as soon as he'd deposited his tray to the side anywhere in the kitchen- they'd take care of it, he knew for sure. He just didn't want to stick around here when he knew-
"But how was your mission?" Florence whined, wanting to grill him while Izzy refused to meet her eyes. She'd see through him in an instant if he answered too much more, and he couldn't let her know how things had really gone or else risk falling out with her again...
"Fine! 'Ll tell you 'bout it later," he muttered, and to his relief, she seemed to agree.
Then her eyes lit up. "Wait!" She hurried back into the kitchen, and there was a flurry of sounds, from the banging of pots to the shaking to flour and sizzling of a pan, and Izzy waited impatiently, knowing better than to brave the hurricane undoubtedly inside.


At that reaction, Raven couldn't help but smile. "I know right?! But wait, that's only the first question, you haven't even heard... Wait," she instructed while she flipped through the booklet to find what she was looking for.
"You're gonna love this one... Aha! 'What was the last thing that made you cry?'" she read aloud, barely able to keep the ridiculous giggle from bubbling out of her throat.
Raven wasn't normally one for nervous laughter, but something about this situation had left her unsettled, even as she looked up for Zach's reaction with gleeful anticipation...
Her gaze snagged for a moment on his wrists, the way they were fidgeting so uncomfortably against their restraints was naturally hard to miss.
But then came that strange sensation again. Like Raven was performing in a musical and she'd missed a beat, had fallen out of time and everyone onstage was caught off guard, paused in uncertainty on what to do having failed to catch her, and the audience too was staring in confusion... Only she was alone in a room with Zach and a single camera lens.
And there was the sudden feeling of straps tightening around her own wrists, hot leather squeezing and chafing on the edges, all in tune with fast-climbing unease-
Raven blinked and snapped out of it, hazel eyes blurring and clearing before they reached up to Zach's face. She seemed to have spaced out for a second time, but it couldn't have lasted more than a heartbeat. It couldn't be anything important. It was nothing.

demon • 3 November 2016 at 12:11 AM

With surprising alacrity Miss Cindy reemerged from the chamber of cleanliness, sparkling appropriately and with every hair in place. "Oh, James darling, it's so good to see you. But your wardrobe-"
"Isn't changing. Don't touch my band t-shirts," James cut her off with a low bite to their tone, drawing something from their pocket and pointing it threateningly towards the blonde, and it glinted coldly in the dark...
They pulled the trigger and out of the tiny pistol shot water that hit her right on the nose until she stumbled backwards, wiping her face and switching her welcoming smile out for a look of utter betrayal. "Why, you-"
Then she grabbed a little something of her own that had been strapped onto her lower leg. Aimed towards the tentacled center of James' shirt; long, thin, pointed and darkly it gleamed...
James dove to the side, behind the kitchen counter as a powerful stream of water cut through the air where they'd stood. It was a heroic effort but Xela saw that they had been caught on the leg despite it all.
Meanwhile, Cindy had taken Xela's bed as cover, and they began exchanging rapid-fire shots with scrupulous precision, almost as many landing on their target than not, and each participant getting more and more drenched with every loosed round. Xela would have thought the small toys would have soon run out of ammunition supply, but James had the sink and Cindy apparently had stocks. It had been an intense three minutes but the war showed no signs of letting up.
Xela looked from the growing puddles on the floor to the half-full glass in her hand. Then she chucked its contents in a great arch that missed Cindy by about a mile but struck James directly on the head, well, at least a little.
There was a pause. James called out from their entrenchment; "What do we do if Xela lands a hit?"
Cindy answered; "Not certain-"
"How about you put your toy weapons down and explain to me why my room is suddenly soaked?!" she jabbed a finger mostly in James' direction, looking about as angry as third degree burns.
"Heheh... Whoops. Truce?" they asked hopefully of Cindy, lowering their water pistol down to the floor slow and deliberately.
Cindy sighed and tossed her great long rifle onto the ground, where it landed with a bit of a splash- she consequently had the sense to look at least a little guilty about it. "Honestly James, you did hit me unawares. You should have it," she surrendered, throwing her hands up to reveal the sorry state of her clothes... Slightly spotted with damp patches. "Look, I just changed and now how absolutely ruined I am! Well done, J." Her approval blended with sarcasm for a singularly confusing tone.
They paused, a smile suddenly breaking out over their till now sopping and slightly downcast expression. "Really? You think I can have it?" Spinning around where they stood, James appealed to the witness for a second opinion. "Xela, what do you say?" They had their hands clapped together as if in prayer and everything.
Xela scowled but still answered. "I don't know what you were trying to do! If the goal was to get as wet as possible, then I guess Cindy gets the prize." Even in the dim blue hue of the room, that much could be seen.
They passed their hand over their dripping head of dark waves and curls. "No, it's- Cindy?"
The blonde shrugged. "Apparently me."
"Ok..." James responded with cautious amusement, before turning their back on the girls and letting out a low, triumphant chuckle. "Well, three down, only four to go," they smiled wide-
Cindy cut of their glow of victory, and the following was an exchange almost as rapid-fire as the previous one with water. "Really well who'd you get-"
"Septa and the assistant-"
"Pssh honey you and I and everyone else knows they are the worst-"
"Shhhh Tonia let me have this!"
Xela put her empty glass to her aching forehead. "Wasn't one of you here on urgent business?"
"Oh... Yeah, sorry," James looked truly contrite. "It's about Septa," they said, and then let Xela explain the situation while they took responsibility for their lapse of virtue and subsequent... Water fight. They began to towel the place down, still quietly smiling about their win all the while.
"So apparently Septa's gone missing or run off for an hour..." This wasn't cooling Xela's headache in the least.

taffy789 • 4 November 2016 at 6:30 PM

Annabell watched the two boys interact with mild interest, too busy chewing her own food to add any comments.
Noticing how Riley hadn’t physically put food in his dang mouth yet furthered her grimace, and she made a mental note to count how many times the fork actually rose to meet his lips. Her attention then turned back to the other boy, Quincy, as he blinked, said, “Oh, yeah, right,” and began to clear the table for what Annabell assumed was part of Riley’s daily paperwork monster.
Quincy carefully tucked all loose sketches away, gently flipped the sketchbook closed, and slowly scooted the book to the edge of the table, out of the way. After this task was finished, he turned back to Riley and raised his eyebrows. “A mission report? That’s boring. Back when I was in First, we used to draw straws to see who was in charge of writing ours up.” He grinned, and what he said caught Annabell’s interest, so she hurriedly swallowed her bite of salad and remarked, “Oh, Quincy, you’d been in First?”
“Uh, yeah, for a few months.” The boy rubbed at the side of his neck, “It was tough, but it was nice. You met a lot of real interesting people. Nothing but cool powers and hard-working personalities. I enjoyed it while it lasted.”
Annabell smiled pleasantly. “Sounds like a lot of fun, especially being around people like that all the time.”
“It was a blast,” Quincy grinned back, and his hand began to move excitedly, accentuating the glimmer of delight that sparkled in his expression as he recalled his past fellow teammates, “You got to know so many different people. Like there was a guy who could’ve been super useful on our last mission, he could heat up anything faster than you could blink, he was always turning everyone’s drinks into steam when they looked away. And there also was this unforgettable girl, the tiniest thing you’ve ever seen, and you thought she was perfectly harmless until she opened her mouth. Then all of a sudden she was the crudest, meanest thing alive, always challenging people five times her size to fights and winning every time. I even knew better than try to tell her anything.” Quincy laughed at the memory, adding, “I could go on for hours, but I’m not going to be that mean to you guys.”
Annabell couldn’t help it, the tired lines all broke down around her mouth, for the guy’s excitement was just that infectious. She continued to probe, if only to stall the less desirable, more miserable discussion Riley had planned for them. “Well,” Annabell continued, skewering a piece of lettuce through its crunchy, white-turning-brown central vein, “I think it’s nice that you remember all these people from First, it’s pretty-” She stopped herself short of saying “cute”, quickly realizing that it was neither the right word nor the connotation she wanted to insinuate. “Admirable,” is what she finished with instead, the word rolling off her tongue with a recovering flourish.
“Oh,” Quincy said, and Annabell blinked upon seeing that her chosen word, despite its relative impersonal nature, still managed to induce a slight, visible flush of Quincy’s cheeks. “Uh, it’s, uh, not really a big deal,” he suddenly was unable to meet Annabell’s eyes, instead choosing to fidget and stare off at the sketchbook off to his right, “Really, me knowing everyone was just more part of my job, ‘cause I held a more, uh, leadershippy position. And when you’re in a job like that, you need to know everyone to assign the right people to the right teams to get the job done.” His hand trailed up to his neck, and he rubbed sheepishly at it, “Besides, those people I mentioned aren’t exactly, well, around anymore, and you tend to remember those people the most, right?” He frowned slightly, sobering up some before remembering his good humor and giving a light little shrug, “Anyway, it’s been six months after all, so maybe you shouldn’t take what I say about First Division to heart, ‘cause I haven’t been a part of that place in ages.” He laughed, turning back to the two sitting across from him, “I could tell you all the gossip flying around Eighth though! There’s some good stuff, but that’s information for you, nothing but a bunch of lousy gossips, it’s what me and my roommate say all the time.” He gave an amused shake of his head, and then grinned at Riley, teasing, “Better be careful, whatever you put in that report will probably be peeked at by fifty different pairs of Eighth eyes before actually getting to where it needs to be.”
…Upon hearing that comment, Annabell had to swallow a flush of embarrassment and hold herself back from flinging her tray across the cafeteria in protest of this news.



“These questions are ridiculous,” Zach stated with a scoff, “Crying? What am I, four? Why would I bother remembering something as useless as that?”
His fingers used what little movement they were allowed to tap impatiently against the table, all loud and resonating beats against thick metal. Him honestly being unable to dredge up any particular memory to properly answer that question aside, the questions being asked to determine him feral or not seemed to be useful for nothing but taking up his time and forcing him to sit longer in an unpleasant situation.
“I hope those were the only two questions you had to ask me,” he complained, voicing this displeasure to Raven, “because I’m starting to think this entire thing is a huge waste of time. These questions are so simple that my idiot power could even manage to squeak out a passable lie, which is pathetic on the Second Division’s part.” Upon mentioning Egos, Zach felt a crawling sensation inch in the back of his head, and he audibly groaned as a second presence slithered into the forefront of his mind.
“Hey~ That’s rude, I try my best~” the voice echoed pitifully into his brain, all despondent and miffed.
Regretting his accidental summoning of the snake, Zach grimaced angrily at the table as if it had said something offensive and he was now planning its murder.
*Egos* Zach thought back in a bitter reply, *Didn’t you run away as soon as these metal bracelets were slapped around my wrists?*
“Yes, but then you said something rude so I had to wake back up to correct you,” Egos explained patiently, ever the helpful.
*Okay you made your point* Zach’s visible frown mirrored his fuming, annoyed thoughts, *now leave*
“But now I’m interested,” Egos whined, “I mean, you’re already following my advice, talking to Raven, and here I was thinking you’d never do it!”
*Egos I’m literally being held here against my will*
“I said it needed to happen, however you decided to get the task accomplished doesn’t concern me much.”
*I never decided to do this. I would never ask for any of this. I actually, in fact, very much hate everything that is happening right now*
“You know, if you’re having trouble with befriending Raven,” Egos said, ignoring Zach’s thoughts, “I have a few tested tricks you could use! Well, one tested trick, but- arph!”
“Screw off,” Zach accidentally muttered out loud to the table, his eyebrows furrowing deeply as he concentrated the entirety of his exhausted brain power on pushing the power out of his mind.

awesomeness • 4 November 2016 at 9:22 PM

Back crowded around the desk and watching the interrogation unfold, Laughing Gas was the first to snort, “Come on, what kind of crazy power tries to prove it’s not a power by talking about its, uh.” He blinked, “…power?”
Mari twiddled her thumbs, standing on her tip toes to peer over the shoulders of the anesthesiologist and the interrogator, “…I don’t think he’s a feral, LG,” she muttered, “I know you must be so disappointed and in deep, deep denial, but honestly? I think you should be afraid of the fact a leader sorta kinda probably hates your guts now?”
“Ouch,” Jaurez snorted, “Mari coming in with the roast, so unexpected.”
“Okay, first of all, I assure you he’s a very, very convincing feral. And secondly, look, if we’re going to talk about people making the higher-ups angry,” LG said, sticking an accusing finger into Jaurez’s shoulder blade, “Why don’t we talk about how Jaurez here basically insulted Five’s assistant to her face?”
Jaurez paled uncomfortably and tugged on two of his fingers, popping them. “Hey, my complaints were completely valid,” he muttered, ashamed but unapologetic, “My girlfriend seriously needs to get out of Second Division. She’s tries so hard, but the work isn’t for everyone- it’s not good for her. And there’s nobody I know that deserves a promotion more than her…”
While Mari frowned sympathetically, LG snorted bitterly, “Yeah, now have fun trying to explain that to Two when that message gets passed up- okay, ow, Mari stop punching us already!”
The female healer didn’t listen and kept creating more work for herself, bruising LG in the arm for how pale he’d made Jaurez go at the memory of that frightening promise made by the assistant-
“Calm down.” Once again, Tab’s solid voice caused the group’s ruckus to blow out like a small flame in a cold wind. “I can’t hear the laptop.” A pause. “’Sides, after what Jaurez just told me about the veteran not wanting this interrogation to happen? If anyone is going to be in trouble with their higher-ups here…” Tabs mused upon this, staring thoughtfully at the camera feed of a scowling Fifth leader apparently locked in a staring contest with a table.
Jaurez coughed, “If you have problems with it Tabs, we could always call of the interrogation…” He trailed off, scowling at the screen, “I mean, considering Five literally received the answer to one of the questions from our, uh, skilled interrogator, and he technically failed the second one by basically admitting to a lack of normal human emotion…” Jaurez shrugged, “There’s no proof yet that he isn’t a crazy feral.”
Ignoring LG’s gleeful “AHA!”, Tabs snorted, “Jaurez, but even knowing that gives me reasonable doubt to his humanity, so leaving him in there wouldn’t sit right with my conscience.” She gave an amused smile, “From the time I spent with Fiver, I think a lack of normal human emotion seems right up his alley.”
“Oh dear, why couldn’t we have gotten a normal leader?” Mari complained quietly in the near silence following Tab’s statement, “I miss Col, I really do.”



It took Naji only twenty minutes to get ready, despite the years he spent lathering sunscreen to every bit of exposed skin, the eternity it took for him to button up that tan, sweat-friendly shirt that had been issued to him. The tent’s door flap loomed, staring accusingly at him as he checked and double checked the small backpack at his feet for necessary items. Water bottles, a compass, a large medical kit full of supplies he barely knew how to use, and- oh! A pad of paper and a pen, for doodling if he got bored or, more likely, and a place to etch down his final will and testament moments before he bled out.
Naji fiddled with the straps of the backpack, adjusting them again and again as if a lack of comfort was the one thing keeping him from greeting he rising sun shining right outside.
The courage he’d used to stand up to get out of bed had all faded back into fear sometime between him brushing his teeth and pulling up his socks.
Now his hands shook as he loosened the backpack straps once more, quaking like his bottom lip did as the tears threatened to spill-
Ziiiiiiipppp
The opening of the tent made Naji’s hands freeze and grip tight onto the backpack strap he held.
Jorge’s voice, “Yo, Naji, are you-” It fell flat on that note, quietening before sighing and picking itself back up with a soft, “Oh, you are awake.”
“Yeah,” Naji croaked back, eyes fixed down on the backpack. He hurriedly fixed the straps, his fingers deftly working to redo what they’d undone. He wanted to say more, add something else, but he could think of nothing, so he stayed silent.
The tent material rustled as Jorge entered in, approaching Naji slowly.
“Hey dude. You’re almost late for the briefing.”
“I’m coming.” Naji worked to keep his voice even, steady and quiet. He failed in this mission, which made Jorge say, sympathetic as ever, “Naji, dude. Don’t sweat this mission, alright? Nothing bad will happen to you, promise.”
With those words, Naji almost bit his tongue in half with how swiftly he clamped down on a sharp reply of, “This coming from the person who was discussing my assured death only a couple of hours ago???”
How badly Naji wanted to speak those words, to tell Jorge that, no, nothing will be okay, nothing will ever be okay, and that it didn’t matter what he claimed because he wasn’t the one going on the suicide mission, was he? No. He wasn’t. Naji knew very well who was the one in hot water, and he knew it was him being thrown to the sharks, boiled slowly alive, and it-
It all wasn’t fair.
“Naji,” Jorge’s voice cut through all thoughts of the dark future and made Naji’s mind burn with how calm and rational it was able to sound, having the luxury to not have to cope with its immediate demise and-
“You look pale dude.”
Naji blinked as he was again dragged from the clenching claws of his cynical introspection. Then, Naji shivered as Jorge made an attempt at levity, “Pale isn’t a good color on guys like us, come on now. It looks all unnatural.”
“Okay,” was all Naji could say to that, whatever comedy falling on ears already given up for dead.
Jorge stood right next to him now, but Naji still jumped when the other boy reached down and grabbed his backpack off the floor for him.
“Don’t worry about carrying this, alright?” Jorge said, heaving the strap onto his left shoulder, “Just… try to get your stomach together and come out soon. Me and Sammy’ll be waiting for you.”
With that sympathy, Jorge turned on his heel and left the tent, leaving the door unzipped and flapping in the light wind flowing inwards.
Naji spent the next minute breathing deep, careful and slow breaths in and out.
It didn’t do much to help.
Nevertheless, he dried the corners of his eyes with the sleeves of his shirt, and he was disappointed to find the sweat-resistant material did not soak up liquid very well.
That being done, he put on a brave face, a façade that could be described as shaky at best and liable to break into a thousand pieces in a moment’s notice.
Then, Naji left the tent, being sure to zip the door flap up behind him.

taffy789 • 5 November 2016 at 11:07 PM

“Morning Naji,” Samuel greeted the boy as he exited the tent, “Time to get this show on the road, huh?”
Samuel popped his knuckles, a slight sort of half smile capturing a mood somehow grim yet pleasant. He waved an impatient arm, as if trying to herd Naji in the right direction, “The admin’s sure not going to be happy with how late we are, but really he isn’t the best person around so~” He trailed off on a sing-songy note, throwing obvious “subtle” glances toward Jorge’s way, as if some kind of visual prodding.
Apparently, Jorge got the message, as he rolled his eyes and snorted, “So, screw ‘em?”
Samuel laughed, “Yeah. Screw ‘em! Silly bureaucratic admin’s getting his panties in a twist over a little extra paperwork and logistics- screw ‘em all!”
Jorge apparently found the humor in this, but Naji allowed the conversation to glaze over him, feeling disconnected with the two jovial guys walking next to him. It wasn’t his conversation anyway; it had nothing to do with him. So Naji kept plodding ahead, feeling very much caught up on the wrong side of the joke. He could almost imagine himself as some sort of French nobleman marching towards a guillotine while two court jesters danced around laughing at his expense.
Really, Naji thought, his head aching, why did the two insist on walking him towards his doom anyway? It was too early, and they both should’ve been asleep. Unless…
Naji reeled back as he realized what was happening- were they… making sure he didn’t try to skip out on his duty?
He skimmed quick eyes over both of the laughing boys, trying to gauge any hidden ploy visible in their mannerisms, and his ears strained, trying to catch any conspiracy tainting their laughter. He found nothing, but the idea still left him discomforted.
Shuffling slower now, Naji’s feet dragged against the sand-coated slab of rock that consisted the camp’s foundation, and he stared at the long lines that trailed behind him. He knew they would disappear given time, fading away later today just as their creator surely would…
“Come on, Naji,” Samuel said, calling the boy back to reality, “Pick up the pace a tad! We’re late enough as is~”
His mouth was dry as the sand coating his tan boots, but Naji somehow managed to say anyway, “If I’m too slow… You guys…. Don’t have to follow me, or walk with me, honestly.” His voice slipped into a passive murmur, “I can make it to the briefing tent on my own, it’s fine.”
“Er,” Samuel blinked. He and Jorge had ceased in their tracks, stopping a few paces in front of Naji and glancing sheepishly from the boy back to one another.
“Er, Naji, you kinda see,” Jorge was the first to respond, giving a nervous laugh, “We really can’t do that, dude.”
“Oh,” Naji breathed in, and his heart plummeted. So he’d been right, Jorge and Samuel had been tasked with making sure he didn’t run off or try to skip out on the mission, of course that’s what this admin guy would expect of him, what else could possibly be expected of him? Naji could barely even trust himself to get out of his cot this morning, how could anyone expect him to be brave enough to not run away like, like-
A coward.
Naji clenched his hands into tight fists, and he wondered what Jorge and Samuel saw when they looked at him. A useless healer, maybe, for they’d found that out about him last night. And now they could add spineless to that long list of his failures too. He bet they, knowing all of this, were happy to have gotten rid of their deadweight team member so quickly, so easily.
Samuel’s echoing of Jorge’s forced laugh made a chill run up Naji’s back.
“Yeah,” Samuel said, his words breezing past his lips, as if they bore no weight, no meaning, “it’s all kinda dumb, what happened. After you, uh, suddenly fell asleep on us last night, we kinda went to go see what was up with that card. Talked to some people. Jorge had to pull me out of the medical tent before I started cussing out your boss. But uh. The mission was gunna be a thing that would happen and wouldn’t not happen, cussing out anyone aside. So uh. We thought of something else.”
“It was Sammy’s idea actually,” Jorge interjected, “And I thought it was the best thing we could do, too. So we went to go wake up the admin at like 1 AM-”
“And that jerk was super annoyed at us and almost refused to do anything about it,” Samuel huffed, angry at the memory, “Seriously, screw him. Jorge was almost about to join me in cussing the guy out this time, I swear-”
“But we didn’t cuss him out,” Jorge amended, “And we were able to convince him to actually do his job for us-”
“And then we kinda,” Samuel coughed, sheepish, “got approved to join you and the brainwashed buffoons on the mission today?”
Naji stared. His mouth might’ve begun to hang open too, because Jorge commented, “Dude, you’re gunna catch flies that way,” before adding in a thoughtful comment of, “Like, I’m pretty sure there was this pretty loud one in our tent this morning…”
Before Naji closed his mouth, he had to use it, say something, anything-
“W-why?” he squeaked out, pathetically quiet.
“Dude, you were getting screwed over,” Samuel breathed out, his voice steady and serious as he explained, “It wasn’t fair to you. And like, we weren’t going to stand by and let you go on this thing without any sorta real backup.” He smiled, broadly, “I mean, what kind of teammates would we be if we ditched you like that? Pretty sorry ones, in my book.”
Naji had never, not at any moment, had expected this.
How could he of, when it wasn’t an idea that would’ve crossed his mind, not one he would have ever thought to entertain..?
Naji’s stomach dropped, sinking lower and lower as a strange, ugly bile rose higher and higher in his gut.
He didn’t deserve this.
And yet.
He struggled to hold back the tears of relief, and he choked them down and swallowed them, no, he wasn’t going to cry, he wasn’t-
“Come on, it’s no big deal,” Jorge said, strolling over to Naji and pounding him twice on the back, “With all of us, this mission’ll be the easiest thing ever. So it’s not a big inconvenience for us or anything, so it’s really. N-B-D, right?” He winked, “Didn’t I say to you earlier that nothing bad was going to happen to you? Really should trust my word more, I’m a pretty smart guy. Sammy never listens to me and that’s why he’s always on latrine-cleaning duty-”
“That was ONE TIME,” Samuel protested.
“Five times,” Jorge corrected, and laughed as his friend muttered some choice words under his breath.
Now stepping after Jorge, who’d begun walking forward again, the dark, swirling cloud above Naji’s head dissipated some, clearing and thinning and allowing for the tinniest bit of what looked like daylight to peer through it. It felt tangible, as if he could reach out and catch the rising morning, and so he did. He gripped it tightly and clung onto the small speck of hope like it was the last breath of oxygen one took before jumping into a swimming pool, an assurance of delayed demise, of momentary life even if the surface was lost forever soon after.
This mission didn’t have to be the end, no, it didn’t- there could be many other, terrible missions to come later, but this one wasn’t an assured death sentence, wasn’t condemned from the start-!
For the first time since he’d read the card, Naji indulged in thoughts of him having a future- a bleak, doomed future, but an actual future nonetheless.

asi • 6 November 2016 at 8:07 PM

"Are y'serious?" Was as much as Izzy could manage, since most of his capacity to cope was taken by the great burden of a plate forced into his hands before he could even think to stop her. Honestly- he thought, as his hands bounced up, just catching on to the new weight- Florence was truly lucky he didn't straight-up drop it. She overestimated his energy levels and reflexes dangerously often. "What m'I s'posed to do with all this?"
It was definitely way too much for him to eat. Izzy suspected that even if he smushed it up, the mass simply wouldn't fit inside his stomach. His body surely didn't have the space.
"Dunce," the lunch lady chided him with a smack to the arm that made him wince, and the plate tilt precariously. "You're supposed to share it, with all your nice new friends! I can't believe you made two new friends, oh gosh," Florence beamed at him with the kind of aggressive soccer-mom pride that made Izzy a little afraid of what she might do if he didn't.
"Don't, 'cause it's not true. They're not my friends," Izzy found it in him to argue over semantics whilst being ruthlessly steered towards the lunch-room wilderness.
"Well, after a taste of my Friendliness Breakfast™, they definitely will be!" Florence brashly insisted, pulling him to a halt in front of the last frontier, the counter that separated the staff from the 'customers'.
Izzy gave her a look, hiking his eyebrows way up his forehead until they disappeared beneath his beanie. "Oh, that explains why you have so many friends," he snarked.
"Shut up," she scowled at him. "I got a more abrasive personality and you know it. You're a dopey and docile little thing when you're not grumpy, which is still kind of sweet as long as you're not snappish," she ranted, making a few less than flattering illustrative gestures all the while. "You got better odds than me for making it work so don't you dare mess it up!"
He looked mildly disgruntled over the way she shoved him forwards, after her own personal brand of encouragement of course. But Izzy wasn't really vexed or irritated but anything she'd said, in fact, he was even a little abashed. "'Kay, I'll... Try an' be nice," Izzy grumbled, looking away to pretend not to hear his friend's squeals of joy. "But Florie, how is this thing s'posed to help? It smells of sugar and looks to be half cream... Do people eat this for breakfast?" he doubted this severely, looking down at the plate in his hands.
"They do, and you'll love it or else!" she declared heatedly, looking offended that he'd suggest anything else. "Trust me. Anyway I had limited means for that but I'll whip you up some killer kushari for lunch. If you go and share this special meal now. That a deal, Izz?" she looked at him expectantly.
There was a moment of halting disbelief, and then... Izzy perked right up at her words. "Seriously?! You got it Flo," and he stepped back into the dining area, looking so ridiculously pleased about the payoff from that encounter that he was even beaming as he approached his teams' seats, towering plate of pancakes in hand.


Riley smiled lightly while the other two talked animatedly, keeping his stomach safe from his breakfast by occupying his hands with the multitude of papers trapped inside his bag. His ears remained very much attentive to the conversation at hand, however, while his mind considered the strangeness of his own situation.
It was interesting that Quincy had enjoyed being in the exalted ranks of First. It was true that he only really knew assistants from it, those being Lily, Raven, and his own, and those roles were naturally overworked. Being in First had to be useful, for networking and training if nothing else. That was probably the reason why Truce tournament challengers were only usually selected from their ranks. Riley wasn't entirely sure that skipping it had been a good thing. The thought that Quincy was possibly more qualified to act leader-y occurred to him.
Making him leadership had been Two's idea, not his own...
He dropped a jumble of relevant papers onto the table, next to a blank page for the actual writing, and then dove back under the table to dig around for a pen.
Once he surfaced Riley reentered the conversation with a thoughtful, "You would think they could spare us some more manpower for these missions, but I think One wants these places checked out discreetly... Or else I'd have taken someone like Alex," he kidded, doing a little 'laser eyes' pantomime with his fingers in front of his eyes. It probably looked more like he was playing as a library book scanner in a game of charades, and Riley was self-aware enough to follow it up with a lop-sided, self-deprecating smirk. "We would've had no problems, I'm sure. But I think the management might be happier this way," he made an effort to assure Annabell, immediately noticing her discomfort.
"I got the idea that she wants to be the first person to see these reports, so who knows when it will even go to Eighth," Riley shrugged. "Anyway, I think we all saw different things on that mission, so writing it together would be, uh," Riley faltered as he looked over Quincy's shoulder and saw who was walking towards them. With a tiny, sharp little smile that alone nearly made the guy unrecognizable, no less.
"Hey," Riley greeted carefully, not wanting to disturb anything, until his gaze landed upon the plate in Izzy's hands. "Oh man!" He sat up enthusiastically, pushing his (scarcely touched) tray and papers aside for the big alien saucer coming down dead center. "You got pancakes?!"
Izzy nodded shyly, looking a bit taken aback by Four's eager reaction. "Yup," he said, sliding in next to Quincy, close enough to brush against his arm and, under the table, hook one foot around Quincy's ankle. "They're for everyone..."
"That's so sweet!" Riley looked very pleasantly surprised.
"Perhaps too sweet," Izzy agreed, eyeing the dripping maple syrup warily.
Riley didn't seem to hear that, now standing up. "I'll get us all some plates, don't you guys let anyone steal my place!"
Still quietly smiling, Izzy fiddled with the cardboard of his milk carton, eventually prying it open to take a sip.


"Yes, those are ridiculous," Raven agreed, perhaps a little shakily- what was going on with her? She gave her own ponytail a little tug as if to straighten it- all of her hair needed straightening, she could feel it puffing out behind her, but what could she do- and focused on the boy in front of her. "They won't prove anything. So unless you want to be stuck in here forever listening to the likes of these," she gestured at the question sheet, "Maybe you'd better take this seriously and start thinking about how you can prove yourself to me," Raven told him, leaning back in her chair, her eyes fixed to his with a kind of stare that left deer dazed and disorientated on the tarmac.
"I'm here to help you, you know? I didn't have to be here, management didn't even want me here," she admitted. Her own fingers drummed briefly on the table as if in reply to his. Raven did have the same impatience, although she was doing well so far by her own measure. It helped that she was a little distracted.
She felt another sort of dizzy spell coming over her, but this time Raven fought it off, hand gripping the table edge tight enough that her knuckles glowed white, until quickly it passed.
Drawing in another deep breath and feeling better, she continued; "I could be doing other things. So if you could work with me a bit? Some very nice and very tired people would really like this over with, but if you're not up to it, we can all leave for a break... If you don't want to help me, I really can 'screw off'..."
Raven was inclined to look away, after hearing those words leave his lips, but she forced herself through it, keeping her eyes steadily on his face. "But you and I know it would be better to get this done now. "
And maybe one of these days she would 'screw off', but... Not while Zach was possibly the only thing keeping her alive in this place.
"If you want out, I need your full cooperation- not some half-assed, whiny, 'i don't care, get it over with already' crap. That won't cut it," Raven told him finally.

taffy789 • 7 November 2016 at 7:04 PM

Annabell watched Riley bounce off, amused by his excitement and pleased that he seemed ready to devour some kind of sustenance (or, well, a lack therefore of…)
Looking down at the food she had left, Annabell quickly found herself losing her appetite for wilted salad and whatever other pseudo-healthy items the kitchen seemed to be trying to force onto her. She glanced upwards, grinning slightly as she prepared a joke about skipping out on her diet to tell Quincy, but she stopped mid-execution upon noticing the guy’s attention had been drawn away from the previous conversation.
He sat turned almost completely right in his chair, arm pressed against Izzy’s on the table as if by accidental closeness, his expression shining with something warm and bright and akin to what an excited dog looked like upon hearing the front door of an empty house open. Annabell noted the body language, the wide smile, the attentive lean towards the other boy, the way Quincy’s eyes flittered, once up and once down, before he spoke to Izzy, humming softly, “You look pretty happy.”
And the uncharacteristic smile on the usually grumpy face of the boy seemed to only magnify Quincy’s own grin tenfold. It, the entire interaction, it was… all very… sappy. Yes, sappy, that was the only word that came to Annabell’s mind, and she floundered, trying her best to determine just how appropriate the adjective was.
“Where’d ya get the pancakes from though?” Quincy continued, one eyebrow cocking upwards with the question. He shifted forward more, as if adjusting his footing under his chair. The telling, silly grin still remained plastered all over his face, and Annabell turned her attention back to her food, pretending to be very interested in finishing her salad and feeling somewhat misplaced, so very suddenly.



When he noticed Raven’s demeanor intensify, Zach ceased the mental equivalent of vigorously and repeatedly slamming a door onto Ego’s slender snake form and making the power’s eyes cartoonishly bulge out with every suffocating smash cutting him in half against the door frame.
He continued paying attention to Raven and not kicking Egos out of his conscious, and Raven’s final words to him left such a soured taste in his mouth- like bitter medicine- that Zach couldn’t even care when he felt Egos slither back into a more comfortable, rooted spot in the back of his mind. He decided to let the power be for the time being, and he turned his attention back to the physical world- namely, back to Raven.
“Do you seriously not think I’m not trying?” Zach bristled, his frustrated wrists twisting against their cuffs, “I’ve answered the questions, so sorry I don’t know how I’m supposed to prove I’m not a power when I’ve been nothing but me this entire goddanged time, and that still hasn’t been enough for anyone yet."
He rolled his eyes, and his hoarse voice crackled like rumpling, dry paper as he spoke again, “Seriously, what else am I supposed to do to prove I’m me and not my idiot power?” Zach scowled, and then his features suddenly softened with a hesitant realization. “… The one you,” he blinked, “have apparently… met, unless my power was a better liar than I realized.”
He stared Raven over, a strange, examining grimace on his face, as if he were about to open his mouth and ask a question and then make everyone wallow in the uncomfortable answer.
… He didn’t ask it.
Instead, Zach simply voiced a disgruntled, deadpanned, “If you have met my power and still aren’t able to tell us apart, then I’m actually offended, Raven,” while slouching some in his seat.

asi • 13 November 2016 at 4:40 PM

"Fortunately I brought all these clothes for you to try over," the blonde muttered, in one fluid motion stripping out of her soggy clothes and turning to the portable wardrobe to select something new. She appeared completely oblivious to the reactions her boldness garnered; James automatically turned their back on her, while Xela's eyes widened. She had already been looking, talking to Cindy when she shed her outer articles, and now she was stuck staring.
Cindy was skinny. Like really skinny. Far skinnier than Xela, or James who appeared as flat in the chest and stomach as could be. Septa was made purely of bone and noodley casing. But Cindy was thinner. Were stomachs supposed to dip in like that naturally? The room was dark, her olive skin was far from pale, and it must have been a trick of the light-
Before Xela could get a better look, the girl climbed into a skirt and pulled on a shirt; the former a sky-blue, long, yoke-waisted affair, and a high-necked crop top for the latter. The moment she'd changed, Cindy didn't look so strange anymore. Between her hips and shoulders she looked wide enough to be human, and her height wasn't anything to scoff at either, as she had nearly a head on Xela, just a little on James.
It still made a difference on the clothes, as they left ankles and wrists uncovered that looked like they might snap between two fingers. Still, they seemed quite functional when with a flick of a hand Cindy conjured out her compact and started 'fixing' up her face once more.
Xela had forgotten that the tool also had a mirror, as the bottle blonde spoke with the roll of her eyes audible; "Dear, you could do less ogling and you, James," she cleared her throat as a gesture could not suffice, "can turn back around. You must not be so embarrassed, silly goose!" she clucked her tongue and them, clicking their compact closed and tucking it away in a flash.
"Right, er, force of habit," James whispered- possibly blushing, Xela couldn't tell- having spun around on their knees, now back to toweling the floor.
Cindy, now looking as sharp as a knife again, sidled over to the redhead. "Believe it or not, the headbanger has surprising old-fashioned morals," she remarked with a disparaging smile.
Seeing how polite and well-mannered they always were, Xela could readily believe this, even if it clashed with their apparent taste in music and stance on tattoos, but-
Xela paused, looking at the backside that was now scrubbing by the beds. "Which bathroom do you use, James?"
Cindy looked like she wanted to say something, but was beaten to the punch.
"If I can help it, I use Septa's, the club staff one, or um, one with a wheelchair sign," they answered without looking up. "Otherwise... The girls' is much cleaner."
Cindy looked horrified. "Are you telling me, the males' is worse?"
"Oh, is it ever. Went in the boys' ONCE. Never again," they winced, sitting up from their drying job to converse. "Toilet paper all over the floor-"
Cindy frowned, "That's not... So bad-" She appeared to be struggling with the concept, though.
Then James put a hand to their temple as if to shade their eyes for shame. "Used."
"Dear God." Cindy shuddered.
"Yeah, let's not go there," they nodded in an entirely sympathetic way, like they were perhaps stopping just short of going over there, wrapping their arms around her shoulders and comforting the shivering blonde. Xela wasn't at all surprised to see that the trophy wife lookalike could be pushed to a mental breakdown by uncleanliness. James' own discomfort was of much more interest to her...
"Didn't you have to, go in to make sure Septa wasn't still there?" Xela pointed out with a sharp look at James.
Both stopped and looked at her.
Succinctly James said; "Crap."
"You didn't-" Cindy cut herself off, eyes and mouth tightening in disbelief, yet realization. "Who was with-"
"Molly," James said the name like a curse for the second time that day, followed by a groan. "Molly, oh Molly. I bet she didn't check inside-"
Cindy paced back and forth, wringing her hands in agitation. "He's probably still sitting on the toilet seat playing that wretched candy game on his phone-"
"And his assistant barely looks up from hers since she got handed it so her missing him is nothing new- her looking up an hour later and thinking she'd missed him is no great leap-" James deduced, scratching at their freckled cheek.
"So you're telling me you came to bother me in the early hours with this headdache when Septa's probably just sitting on his butt where you left him." Xela sighed, dropping down onto her own bed with a light 'oomph'. It startled her not for the first time just how plush it was. That much padding couldn't be standard issue, right?
James looked up at her, dark ripply hair still dangling droplets off its ends, and their expression could not be more sodden with apology if they tried. "You had a headache before I came, right? Did I make it worse? Sorry..."
"It's fine-" Xela began to reassure them-
"Don't say that yet," Cindy warned, interrupting her. "Septa has to be found for sure before we relax."
The power decided not to say anything about how the tensions had definitely been highest directly prior to the water-gun fight.
"Ye-es," agreed James, rolling the syllable for an extended, nervous second. They even chewed on their bottom lip briefly before continuing. "He might still be in the bathroom... Or he may have been kidnapped by Ennea and her squad," they seemed to regret throwing out there as soon as they did it.
Xela gave a look of incredulity. "That happens?" Who would want to kidnap Septa, honestly? How annoying that would be!
"Um, we don't always, um, get along." James seemed focused on finishing up their drying job now, shuffling over to the other bed, wavy-haired head bent down to the floor.
Meanwhile Cindy was... Smiling like a Stepford wife while grinding her teeth and rubbing her knuckles. "If she's touched him- or says one more thing about me- or James- I'll-" then she muttered something Xela couldn't understand.
From the slightly worried look James shot her as they finished up in the corner, it wasn't just her feeling unnerved about what might have just been promised there. It sounded a bit like Cindy visiting the Ennea might be more dangerous than leaving the hypothetically captive Septa with her, but, the power was inclined to let this slide...
"Well, why don't you two get going then." Xela had put up with a lot this morning and she did have things she wanted to do.
James looked at her. "I thought the three of us-"
"No! One of us has to stay here," Cindy told James, waving a hand at the bed behind them.
They started, twisting their head around. "Wha-ahhhhh!" Their hands grappled with the duvet in order to steady themself, gasping to recover breath sucked from their lungs by surprise. Their back was pushed into the side of the bed by the pair of little hands that had descended onto their shoulders, and now the face they belonged to was hovering overhead, grinning in a startlingly disconcerting fashion.
"Who're you?" the small ruffian questioned her ambushed prey. She hovered close enough to even tickle their forehead with her silky dark hair, although now it formed barely more than a helmet around her head.
Guithe clearly had no reservations about scaring the crap out of their early morning visitor.
James calmed with admirable speed, and thereafter introduced themself nicely. "Oh, hello there. I'm James, friend of the two ladies here," they indicated towards Xela and Cindy, and from anyone else those words might have been disgustingly flirtatious, but from James they were nothing but respectful. "And Septa, and yourself if you like," they offered with open arms and a suggestion of a smile.
Then James said nothing as the deep blue eyes narrowed, drawing back slightly while the wooden tip of a sword was pressed harder against the underside of their chin.
"Put your hands in the air and your weapon on the ground, now," Guithe instructed coolly, whilst forcing James to tilt their head back farther and reveal more of their neck.
"Weapon?" And Guithe directed a nod down their body, which they soon understood.
"Um." They paused, considering the logistics of both demands, before raising one hand and reaching into their sweatpants pocket with the other. The miniature water pistol abandoned and retrieved earlier was once again cast onto the floor to signify their surrender.
Keeping her eyes locked on her target at all times, and the threat of the sword-point never easing, the young girl stepped off the bed and picked up the gun. While James was still frowning over the convoluted process, and before either witness could so much as say a word, Guithe pulled the trigger at point-blank range.
Click. James blinked their bright peppermint eyes, which in their magnific unconcern had never been squeezed tight, just as their muscles had never braced for impact. "Oh, I never did reload after the last bout," they explained as even with rapid-fire clicks the pistol failed to spit anything further than a slight misting that touched James' nose.
Pouting, Guithe tossed the dry and useless weapon away and turned instead to... Her ally. "Miss Cindy!" she called out, though her attention remained focused on her hostage. "Now's your chance! I have the tran- tans- guess- gressor in custardy!"
Honestly, thought Xela as she rubbed a layer of skin off her face with the palm of her hand, she had no flipping clue what was going on now.

demon • 13 November 2016 at 11:12 PM

"'M always this happy," Izzy managed to argue, though his grumbling tone was entirely infused with lazy contentment. "Don't pretend s'abnormal," he mumbled, crossing his arms standoffishly even as he seemed to melt like butter at the sound of Quincy's hum and the brightness of his smile.
Looking away from the guy very conveniently placed at his side, Izzy appeared to attempt a glare on the pile of pancakes, as if this- his current apparent happiness- was somehow unfortunate and also the pancake's fault. But the attack lacked even the least degree of intensity. His face scrunched up and Izzy tried to remove or hide his tiny smile, but...
He looked instead a bit like a cat being scratched in just the right place, and like he might break out into purring with just a little more care and attention.
Quincy's question broke through the pleasant fog and Izzy straightened in his seat, a move both to sharpen his focus and respond in kind to Quincy's own shift. "Florie, y'- you know, my old boss."
Izzy might have mentioned her a couple of times, and ranted about her a couple dozen more, when appropriately incensed by tensions at the workplace. That... That had happened on no small number of occasions.
"Said she'd make me kushari fo' lunch..." Izzy's lips quirked upwards in the corners more and more as they made their way around each word.
He reached one hand down under the table and rested it on Quincy's knee, at the same time grounding himself more in the moment, so he could lean in with one elbow on the table and focus on Annabell. "Y'do know there is very little nutr'nal value in that stuff, right?" he questioned her with his intact brow scornfully cocked.
It was at that point that Riley returned from the serving counter looking marginally disturbed by something that he had encountered. He had at least completed the quest for plates and passed them around to everyone, perturbed expression hovering on his face like an ominous cloud might before releasing rain.
Hesitantly, Riley broached the topic. "There- there was a very strange lady who gave these to me... She was very enthusiastic and um, boisterous and kind of aggressive about it... Almost scary," he tensed his shoulders where he sat, pulling them inwards as Riley could still feel her eyes on the back of his neck.
"Yeah," Izzy said, snorting. "There's a reason she doesn't have other friends to be invested in."
Riley just blinked his traffic light green eyes at the other boy before stabbing a pancake and dragging its syrup-bleeding corpse onto his operating table of a plate. Izzy waited to make sure both Annabell and Quincy had taken one too before he followed suit.


"Oh, I'm sure you could try less," Raven simply looked at him. "But more? Sure, I think you can do better, even if it's only finding a better use for the energy you spend complaining." And she ignored the strange looks that he sent her, and the somewhat uncomfortable memories they conjured up, involving being stuck in a hole underground and also tongue. Also remembering what exactly his power had been good at, and it certainly wasn't lying...
She refused to blush and shifted in her seat no more than a little bit. A very little bit.
"But unless we can think up a better way to establish that you're you, you're going to have to take answering these ridiculous questions seriously," Raven scowled, not liking the prospect herself. "It can't just be my 'gut feeling' testimony, after all, personality can easily be faked."
By anyone skilled enough to do it, of course, but she'd far from received substantial proof that Zach's power did not have that ability, regardless of whatever she thought.
She slid out the single, sparse sheet that informed her on what limited information they did have about Zach's past, prior to death-island IOD. "They're going to want you to show some humanity. I'm guessing that you really don't want to, but talking about your childhood is probably the best bet you have on getting out of here anytime soon."
The dizzying... Episodes, that Raven had been experiencing since she stepped into the cell room seemed to have cooled and subsided for now. This allowed her to relax a little in her chair; although she didn't anticipate a positive response to her last lot of words, it was only Zach so surely there was a limit to how badly he could respond... Her ears were prepared for yelling, screaming and thrashing against his restraints.
An awful shiver squirmed its cold, ghastly way through the bones of her spine.

taffy789 • 14 November 2016 at 10:04 PM

“What, who’s pretending anything?” Quincy teased, sounding perfectly innocent. He swore, mock-solemnly, “I have never pretended, not once in my entire life.”
He stopped with the joke to stare, positively enamored at the sight of his happy boyfriend. He couldn’t help it, the poorly hidden up-quirk of Izzy’s lips was adorable and it took all, every ounce of Quincy’s willpower not to lean over and press a smile of his own against the guy’s mouth.
And perhaps it was because of the girl sitting across from them and shoveling salad into her mouth, but he refrained from anything of the sort, somehow.
“Florie, huh?” he said instead, trying his best not to sound surprised, and failing. Given that record, he hadn’t expected- well, he hadn’t expected what to expect, exactly.
“Well, it’s all pretty, well, nice of her,” he concluded anyway, with an earnest nod.
His attention turned away from Izzy when Annabell began choking on her salad, and Quincy looked at the girl with a concern that only faded after she managed to get out a wheezing, “I know, it’s fine.” He would’ve asked her if she needed some water, or could even breath given how red she looked, but Riley setting the plates down on the table made his attention span switch gears again.
Although he wasn’t that hungry, Quincy stabbed a fork through a pancake and dragged it to a plate just because everyone else seemed to be doing it. Not caring to eat much in that moment, he let his hand drop under the table, interlacing his finger’s on top of Izzy’s as they rested on his knee.
Straightening up in his seat, he laid his left arm across the table and leaned his weight forward, to better look across the table at the other two who were eating. Being the only one not chewing on syrup-coated pancakes, Quincy decided to speak up about the topic that had been derailed by the appearance of pancakes.
“So, the mission report, huh?” he prompted Riley. “Should we uh, start from the part where we got separated, because everything up to then had been, well,” he shrugged, “well, normal I suppose, and then the walls started sweating ash…” At that memory, Quincy frowned.


A numbing chill made Egos complain and slink away in Zach’s mind, returning to the subconscious and escaping the sudden, biting cold. Zach felt the absence keenly; the emptiness left so stark and so prominent that Zach registered it despite him barely not being able.
The blunt of his focus had instead concentrated entirely on Raven, the words she’d spoken replaying over and over again in his mind, filling the space Egos’ presence had left and struggling to make sense of themselves.
Before too long, finally, came clarity.
“…That’s my best bet?”
The words exited his mouth cautiously, soaked with disbelief. Sharp eyes skimmed over his assistant, again searching her expression for any maliciousness, an intent to deceive, any sign of joy derived from the situation.
Zach looked for this, and he saw nothing but cooled, set determination.
That affected him.
In his seat, he deflated completely, all previous bristling of muscles loosening, remaining taut with stress but slumping against his chair and the table in a manner of utter resignation. He rolled his wrists once again against the cuffs, and he stared uncomfortably to the right of Raven’s face, at the bare wall past her.
“I don’t know what talking about my crappy past will do,” Zach muttered uncooperatively, then sighed and relented, “but if that’s my best bet of getting out of here…” He rolled his eyes, but still sat up further in his seat, eyes drifting closer to actually meeting Raven’s.
“My childhood-” Zach wavered, drawing a blank. The pause extended, so long that it almost seemed as if he was preparing something big, some kind of elaborate, eloquent explanation of his feelings about his past-
“Sucked,” he concluded finally, nodding his slightly head as if that one word explained it all.
He then stared towards at the wall, his expression a grimace. Shifting in his seat and slumping backwards again, as if giving up, he shrugged apathetically and said, breezily, “There’s really no other way I can think to say it, Raven.”
His hands balled into fists, and Zach inhaled deeply, his eyes finally drifting to met his assistant’s. Frowning and feeling uncomfortable under her gaze, Zach's tone switched, defensive nearly challenging as he snorted out, “And I can't think of anything else to talk about, and so that's all I got. And if that's not enough for you, then maybe you should leave and declare me a feral, if that’s what you really’ve been waiting to do.”

asi • 15 November 2016 at 2:35 AM

There wasn't a full-on panic attack, like Raven had braced herself for half-sarcastically. Perhaps there simply wasn't enough heat in the room for that. Despite them being in the neighborhood of a genuine desert, and Raven knowing that her short-sleeved t-shirt was perfectly sufficient for the day's temperatures, that didn't stop the strange chill from infiltrating her bones, so...
In a way, it was there. Something in Zach's eyes still showed echoes of trapped animal circling its cage. An uncomfortably apt image, that thought brought her, and for a moment Raven wasn't sure if her will could hold up against that, wasn't sure if she couldn't keep herself from looking away. But there was intelligence to be found in the darkness his eyes kept, and she used that to stay grounded, for the duration of the stare.
Zach looked elsewhere then, and her focus jumped away, following his movement, finishing on the cuffs. Cuffs which he was still struggling against, as a muted but regular habit.
She could feel again a phantom grip around her own wrists, but it wasn't some phenomena of empathy she was experiencing, because it wasn't cold like the metal twisted around Zach's wrists, and it wasn't clamping down on her flesh like solid metal should. It strained against her, so that every pulse of blood running through those veins felt to be fighting a battle for every millimeter gained, and the touch of the leather burned...
But when Raven glanced down at her hands, there was nothing there. She focused on the file they were holding, on the little printed lines in black, of symbols that formed words that composed ideas. Their figures swam before her eyes but Raven didn't read any of it.
When Zach eventually spoke, it came as a relief, since she was able to concentrate on that.
"Well," she said slowly, testing her voice as the blistering feeling on her wrists swelled and then faded. When it was gone, Raven lowered the file she'd pretended to read over, resting it on her lap. "That's a start, isn't it?"
She looked at him perhaps a little too much like he'd just made progress, but to Raven it felt a bit as though Zach had done her a favor right now just by finally talking. "I think-"
She paused, swallowing. She could see it wasn't him. For a second, Raven held her breath. And then she knew it wasn't her breathing she was hearing, either.
Raven twisted around in her seat, and looked behind her, at nothing but empty walls and the thin metal locker-style door. Nothing there. But the noise had stopped.
So she resumed her previous position, glancing Zach's way and wondering if he could have heard it, too, or if she was alone in the... Experience. Judging by Zach's complete lack of reaction to any of the prior oddities that had occurred in the room, Raven was going to go ahead and guess that he hadn't. She also didn't want to ask with the knowledge that a room full of people were probably watching, ahem... In case she seemed entirely crazy. Starting to look more and more likely as that was.
Raven forced some kind of smile onto her face as she brushed it off. "Sorry, I'm still kind of tired, I- maybe you could try telling me what the suckiest thing was about it?" Raven asked, intent on trying herself.
She wasn't going to give up- weird noises were just that, weird noises, and Zach was being no worse than ever...


Izzy appeared to extract one hand with some small level of difficulty out from under the table, so he could slice up his pancake into petite little portions and eat while listening unhappily to the Fourth leader.
"Yeah," Riley agreed with Quincy, a matching frown appearing on his own forehead. "That was certainly weird. Hey, Quincy, you work in Eighth, right?" he directed the question towards the force-fielder without any real query behind it. "Think you or someone could maybe look into that place for me? I'd at least like to know why it shut down," he said thoughtfully, stirring the maple syrup into his cream with the end of his fork.
Four then turned his attention back to the rest of them. "Anyway, I guess we'll just recap one by one, starting with..." His finger landed on the beanie-wearing curly-haired guy who was just then lifting a star-shaped piece of pancake up to his mouth. "You, since you were the first to split from the rest of the team."
Watchful of the rest of the table, Izzy put the pancake in and started chewing. "... 'Uthin..."
"... What?" Riley frowned harder.
Izzy stuck another two portions (a triangle and, an eagle??) in, munching steadily without interruption. "Ai saigg, 'uthing..." And he continued to eat, glaring without subtlety at Four between bites.
Then, when the leader still appeared uncertain, apparently wanting to try further prompting in order to get the tracker to clarify and elaborate, Izzy was driven to extreme measures. He took the uncut remainder of his pancake, the majority of the mammoth mass in fact, opened his jaws wide and stuffed the entirety of it inside. Once his face was bulging with pancake, the act of eating appeared to dramatically intensify in difficulty, however, Izzy still worked at it, his torn-up eye-tatters twitching from the strain of it all the while.
Riley waited patiently, one hand holding a pen, poised to write.
Izzy stopped chewing, cheeks still full with food.
There was a very awkward stare before Riley cleared his throat. "Uh, or not! Any volunteers?" He glanced between the remaining two, smiling apologetically in particular at Annabell. He knew she really didn't want to...

demon • 18 November 2016 at 6:38 AM

After her sleep, spent curled inwards nestled in a mess of blankets, Guithe came out looking far from polished or battle-ready. Her dark hair was swimmingly straight and shining, but that was because Septa happened to be almost as overstocked on shampoo and conditioner as he was on barrels of alcoholic beverages (not that it did him any good). Other than that though, she was in as much of a disarray as Cindy had been when she had woken. If not worse.
Xela wrinkled her nose at the scrunched up tunic, wondering if that wouldn't be hard to straighten out later- but that wasn't her problem. It would definitely be Miss Cindy's.
Guithe was standing to her full short height, in heart-printed leggings and on bare feet, holding Xela's empathetic bartender against the bed by swordpoint. In fact, now Guithe was trying to egg on her fashionista babysitter into shooting the poor fellow. Xela hadn't the faintest clue how it had come to this, but of one thing she was certain: this was all Septa's fault, somehow.
"Oh my gosh, Guithe..!" The lustrously-groomed blonde brought a hand up to her mouth, gave a small kind of sniffle... Then broke out into full-on belly-aching laughter, deep and quite unlike the tinkering lady-like affair Xela would have expected from her. "Ha, ha, ha..." Cindy's entire body shook with the force of her laughter.
James' lips were only twitching, but the smile could be heard in their voice as they said; "Hey now, I fail to see how this is funny. 'Custard' is no laughing matter!"
Cindy made that snuffling sound again as she tried to rein it back, and then began chortling even harder, clutching at the stomach she appeared to lack.
Having stood through this all with blank eyes of confusion, Xela finally addressed her young charge. "Come on Guithe, if you woke up that early you should have heard that these people need to go put Septa back in his place," she frowned a bit, wishing that she meant more than just restoring the jester to his office kingdom.
The young girl's bottom lip appeared to be trembling, causing Xela to inadvertently take a step back. "Xe-Xe, are they making fun of me?" she asked, blue eyes shining pale in worry.
"No!" Cindy was alarmed into raising her voice, but still unable to stop chuckling. "I am only so- so impressed," she delicately wiped tears out from the corners of her eyes with a handkerchief.
The wooden blade poked James even harder; they were now having trouble swallowing with their head bent so far back. "But you..." Guithe accused lowly, now locked in a stare with their wide greeny eyes.
"I really thought you said custard?" James managed to still speak clearly regardless of being somewhat choked.
"Yes, you're in custard, and everything you say will be used against you!" Guithe stuck one hand on her hip, trying to imitate her big sister's brand of sternness.
Xela interjected thoughtfully; "Guiffs, I think custard is some sugary dessert food, and when you arrest someone you call it custody."
Guithe's nose wrinkled in her confusion. "Which did I say?"
Sighing, Xela exchanged a look with the bewildered yet very much entertained prisoner. "Custard-y..."
"Well good, I love custard!" The young girl announced unashamedly, "I will love it from the minute I try it!"
James snickered, Cindy hiccuped then began invading Xela's sparse 'kitchen' for a glass of water, and Xela looked on blankly, feeling a distinct lack of control of the situation.
Guithe's attention was again captured by the former. "Do you like custard?" she wanted to know.
"Um, actually-" Cindy was making rapid 'X' signs as James spoke, but they chose to look past her with a wobbly smile, "I'm not really a fan of creamy stuff myself. If I had to, I'd take some sweet rice porridge, you know, with cinnamon or salted caramel..."
"Rice pudding? Dear me. You- you are honest to a fault, darling," Cindy accused between hiccups, turning away to sip urgently at her water.
Guithe nodded in complete accord. "I agree with Miss Cindy! You aren't very smart at all..."
Xela too was laughing now at the utter dismay on the poor barkeeper's face.
"But your hair is very pretty. It's sparkly and squiggly!" Guithe said brightly, patting it down like she'd forgotten how to stroke. "Miss Cindy, come soak Mista James so we can play dress-up with him!"
"Ohhhh no, ohoho no," James waved their hands in front of their body in a defensive motion, finally some urgency in their motions and expression, even while they were still smiling courteously. "Nooo thank you, I am very happy with my current state, thank you-"
"Of being threatened?" Guithe asked sweetly, tilting her head, soft dark hair and its sharp-cut fringe flopping with her.
James leaned to one side and the wooden sword came with them. At the same time, Xela noticed, their free hands were reaching up towards Guithe's sides, traveling higher...
Xela was ready to bark out a warning, unable to attack as Guithe stood almost directly in her line of fire- until Guithe squealed in loud, helpless laughter as the androgyne assailed her with tickles. "Sorry kid, but you've forced my hand," they exclaimed, stopping only in their assault once Guithe was reducing to a writhing lump of giggles.
The battle secured, they began to edge away from the little girl, only for her to summon her last dregs of strength to snatch onto their leg and hold fast.
"Ciiiiiiiiiiindyyyy," she whined, gripping tightly, determined not to let go.
The blonde strode over to pull her away, lifting Guithe up briefly with a great big heave before plopping her back down, separate from the barkeep. "James really has to go recover Septa now. And ze did defeat me in combat fair as squares. I must give hem that." She shrugged generously, magnanimously.
"You're the best friend a guy could ask for," James sighed earnestly, picking themselves back up and onto their feet. Meanwhile, Xela, having heard what sounded like both male and female pronouns from Cindy, felt herself to be slowly losing her grasp on the human idea of gender.
"And better you than the others. See, Guithe, it's not like we're rivals for anything," she gave a posh, princess-like scoff. "I may not win the prize but we are the same side-"
"Except for-" James had this knowing look-
Cindy cut them off with a displeased kind of smile. "Now now, Jamie dear, do speak for yourself..."
They looked solemn for a moment. "OK. I'll- I'll do that... A-anyway, Guithe, aren't you worried about Septa? We don't want to lose him for too long, do we?" They smiled, not seeming nervous, but something else was definitely on their mind.
"Big Brother Lich-y is tall and dark and handsome and cool and smart and fun and powerful! We don't need to worry! He'll come and help us dress Mista James up," Guithe informed them with utter confidence and grand fluttery gesticulations as big as she could make them.
Xela fought the urge to either give in to hysterics or pound her head violently against the wall. At least she wasn't alone; one other in room seemed to share in her dilemma, only with more composure and much less panic.
"Septa is maybe three of those things, and needs no more inflation of the ego," Cindy commented with some small amount of scorn clear in her tone. "If he bursts he'll be none."
James looked concerned for another reason entirely. "Big brother..?"
"Not biological, dearie," Cindy tutted, shaking her head.
"Oh..." Though it appeared to Xela that they didn't look much appeased at all. "But he really does need to be fetched, for security's sake," James told Guithe, knees bent to put them on her level. "You wouldn't want him to stay missing, would you?"
"No..." Guithe mumbled, chewing on the inside of her cheek. Then she perked up. "We'll all go together to see Big Brother Lich!"
The teens exchanged a series of looks. All of them communicated varying degrees of 'Is this OK?'... In the end, Xela shrugged decisively. "Okay. Why not? She can go. But I don't want to-"
"But Xela!" James looked at her plaintively. "I really need to talk to you, it's about some of the stuff that happened last night-"
She threw up her hands in surrender: in that case, they really would need all of them to come along. Cindy was essential for running distraction on Guithe... Because Xela would not have the little girl even more excited about the idea of the club scene than she already was.
"Fine then, everyone out," she shepherded them all through, including Guithe and her complaints about still wearing what she slept in and not having checked on Rambo- still sleeping soundly, Xela assured her. And as for the clothes, well, Guithe should have thought of that before she decided to squander time playing around!
Upon the younger girl's insistence, Cindy held her hand as they walked, while Guithe's other trailed the wooden swordpoint along on the ground behind her.

taffy789 • 18 November 2016 at 9:45 PM

Zach had lifted an eyebrow at Raven’s strange, tensed twist around to look behind her. When she waved the occurrence away, he too relaxed, for the sudden movement had caused him to react by springing up in his chair. But since everything seemed to be fine, he left Raven to figure out her own weird lethargy and focused on the next question she’d sent his way.
“That’s an impossible question,” he stated, blandly, leaning his shoulders against the cold, hard metal of the chair supporting his back. “What didn’t suck about it?”
He lifted his head backwards, exposing his bruised, welted neck as he stared up at the ceiling above.
“The needles sucked, for one,” he frowned, eyebrows furrowing with displeasure, “They took a lot of blood all the time, for some kind of testing. Then they would jab-” he faltered, as if realizing his own lack of knowledge, “stuff back in, who the heck knows what it even was?” He snorted, bitterly, as if almost amused, “I bet they didn’t even have a clue. All I know is that your arms always felt sore. It never once felt like you hadn’t gotten punched.”
He dropped his gaze from the ceiling, letting it fall and wander around the room, looking anywhere but across from him. “Look, there isn’t a lot to say. Being there sucked, and I can tell you that. But, the specifics? It’s hard to say anything about it other than it was literal heck. I honestly couldn’t tell you how long I was there for,” he admitted this with an unconcerned shrug. “Everything bled into another, even when they moved me around to a different room, they all looked the same. But,” Zach added with an eye roll, “It’s not like IOD isn’t another cage with nowhere to go, anyway.”
He said this scornfully, then gave a slow, relenting sigh that sounded exhausted- no, deflated, almost reminiscent- and added, “I never understood why… some people thought this place was a better alternative to the labs. It all seems the same to me, people throwing us from one sucky situation to another and not caring what happens. Another place they expected us to die in, but kept pretending that wasn’t the end goal. So, when it comes to getting me to show, what, humanity,” he said, countering Raven’s previous logic, “It’ll be easier for me to talk about the suck that is IOD, since the BS I put up with today is clearer in my mind. Obviously Raven, my childhood sucked, but if you haven’t exactly noticed, my present isn’t all roses and chocolate either.”
The last note rose sardonically, and he looked back at Raven and met her with a barely visible smirk, “If anything, the only good thing about this place is how there’s nobody-”
A memory- a realization- slammed into him, hitting him hard and forcing his hands to curl up into balled fists.
“Never mind,” he spat suddenly, venomously, “I remembered what I hated most about the place. It was the- freakin’- people.” His body scrunched into itself with an intense agitation, the shift in his previously passive demeanor sharp, cutting, dangerous. He shot Raven a particularly nasty glare, as if the tightness winding his shoulders were somehow her fault, and Zach scoffed out, purposefully scathing, “There’s your answer, Raven. The people running those places were utter crap. Happy?”



“Does Five assistant seem off to you?” Mari questioned her superior, a frown small and concerned pressing into her lips.
Tabs stared intently at the laptop screen for a few seconds longer before turning away from it with a sigh.
“Perhaps,” she said, her long fingers running through the thick, wavy curls of her hair, “but if so, I haven’t noticed. I’ve been too busy to wrap my brain around Fiver there.”
Mari’s frown twisted into something displeased but equally sympathetic. “He’s um, a character alright!” she agreed hesitantly, then added, quieter, “but it was nice of you to kick the other two out for this part, I think.”
Tabs snorted. “They were being too rowdy anyway. I warned them once; I had every right. Besides,” she turned back to the laptop, “you appear to be the least gossipy one in your group.”
Mari huffed, “They’re not really my group, ma’am, but I do a lot of standby for the interrogation wing, which is,” she sighed, conflicted, “not always so nice. But those two, yeah, I suppose I know them better than anyone else here…”
She followed Tab’s gaze back to the laptop screen, where Zach was speaking about his past. Mari closed her eyes and sighed again. “Speaking of some not so nice things…”
“I didn’t know Fiver was a lab rat until going through his files today,” Tabs commented blandly, “must suck.”
“All the more reason to get him out of there. No wonder he tried to like, murder LG,” Mari said, attempting at humor, “I mean, despite Five’s bad temper, you really can’t help but sympathize with the guy after what we put him through.”
Tabs stared silently at the laptop screen, lips pressed in a thin line.
Noticing the quiet, Mari tensed, and then venture, “Um, Tabs…?”
“I’m trying,” Tabs finally breathed out, sounding frustrated, “I hate not being able to sympathize, to care. But I have a dead scout whose MIA paperwork I need to enter into the system today, and it boggles my mind why Gavin died while Five and his assistant came out comparatively unscathed.”
“You can’t save everyone,” Mari countered, quietly.
“You can try,” Tabs replied, evenly, “And something tells me Five didn’t.”
Mari had nothing to say to that. Instead, she stared at the tiger coffee mug on the table, down at the lukewarm, brown water sitting peacefully inside. Her next question came out more an apologetic whisper, “I’m sorry. Was Gavin your… friend?”
“Didn’t know him,” Tabs said, eyes concentrated on interrogation again, “But it didn’t matter. I’m tasked with the horrendous job of dishing out assignments. Our base doesn’t have the best admins, but I can’t do like everyone else. I can’t toss out missions without caring for the people who get shorthanded. I care. I’m proud of caring. I’m not ashamed of it, even though it would be easier to be like the other admins we have around and. Not care, and just do my job.”
She leaned back in the computer chair, fingers moving to the desk, to tap out a slow, steady rhythm on top of the old wood. “So,” she began again while blinking tired eyes, “You can see why it pains me when a higher up waltzes right in and messes up what I’ve been working to fix. How it's hard for me to sympathize much with apathy.”
Tabs stopped tapping on the table. When she spoke again, she spoke coolly, and her dark eyes were fixed solely on the screen. “And how tough it is for me not to care, when I really don’t want to be the apathetic one.”
Mari really, really had nothing to say to that. She stayed perfectly quiet, watching the interrogation move along instead.

awesomeness • 19 November 2016 at 2:08 PM

“Yah, dude, prepare yourself for some huge BS,” Samuel warned Naji in a hushed tone before pushing open the flaps of the briefing tent, “the admin here totally sucks.”
Naji- still flying high from learning his possibly of dying had decreased by at least fifty percent- could only nod, the small grin on his face completely unable to be washed away-
“You’re late,” a harsh voice spat out as soon as he stepped inside the tent and, whoops, there went that tiny smile, scurrying away with its tail between its legs.
“Yeah, sorry, dude,” Jorge quickly amended, stepping inside the tent right after Naji, “we have a good reason, we were late because-”
“We didn’t wanna come on time,” Samuel interjected, playfully pushing Jorge out of the way to enter the briefing tent himself.
Ignoring the displeased frown Jorge sent his way, Samuel seemed unconcerned as the tall admin rose from the seat behind his metal desk, towering unpleasantly over the group.
“Strange you don’t want to come on time, seeing as you practically threw me out of bed to change these mission orders,” the admin huffed, glaring such sharp daggers at Samuel that Naji flinched out of the line of sight, out of fear of getting cut.
“Threw you out of bed to do your job?” Samuel challenged, arms crossing over his chest.
The admin’s back straightened. “I could always reverse those orders, I have you know. It wouldn’t be a problem now, seeing I’m already wide awake…”
Samuel eyebrows furrowed, looking cross and twenty different shades of angry, but Naji’s fearful squeak at the threat made Samuel's shoulders relax back down without a fight.
Jorge cleared his throat. “That won’t be necessary, trust me. We’re sorry for being late, dude. Won’t happen again. Promise.”
“Not my problem,” the admin scoffed, “I won’t be the one briefing you tomorrow.” He then sat back down, lazily flipping through the files present on his desk. “Thank god on my part, honestly. But heaven have mercy on your soul if you think you all can pull this crap with the Spec-Ops in charge…”
Although Naji blinked, the terminology of the threat being completely lost on him, Samuel perked up from his frustrated gloom. His eyes widened with disbelief, as if he’d just heard his name be called out as winner for some kind of high-prize raffle.
“Spec-Ops?” he repeated, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet, “which ones? I mean, are they just Mona’s, or are they, uh, Dia’s-”
“One of the two,” the admin verified, disinterested.
Glowing with excitement, Samuel grinned and playfully shook a grinning Jorge’s arm, mouthing silently, “We freakin’ lucked out, dude.” When he turned to Naji for a fist bump filled with the same joy, Naji could only half-heartily meet it, too confused over what Spec-Ops were to share similar enthusiasm. To him, the admin had made it sound like the Spec-Ops were something to be feared, not celebrated-!
But the sudden piping up of the admin turned Naji’s puzzled thoughts away from why he should be happy and back to the young man behind the desk.
“Where was I?” the admin cleared out his throat, rather dramatically. “Ah yes, that’s it…” He trailed off, holding a manila folder upside-down and in front of his entire face, comically too close for him to possibly read. In a serious voice, he read off, completely monotone, “Recon mission, sand, desert, desert, desert, walking, Falchions base nearby, walking walking walking, more sand, more desert, very hot, don’t die.”
That being done, he put down the folder. Blue eyes and a poisonous smile both looked upwards, meeting the group’s all too innocently, “That was the briefing, now leave.”
“Dude,” Jorge said, concerned.
“If you’d wanted the non-abridged version, you should’ve been here when those soldaditos you have for mission buddies were hear to listen to it and ask me a million questions, like any of this actually mattered. So if you want to know what you’re doing, you have to rely on those fools. Have fun, try not to overwork yourselves.” The admin swiped the folder from his desk, spun around in his chair, and began sorting it into a small filing cabinet behind him. “Stop standing there gawking and leave already,” he called out from over his shoulder.
Feeling like he’d been slapped, Naji turned to leave, red in the face with shame for making his group late. He turned even redder when he saw Samuel and Jorge following the admin’s orders to leave, but doing so by both slowly backing out of the tent while flipping the bird to the admin’s turned back…
When the admin viciously turned around to see if the group had left yet, Naji almost collapsed out of fear when Samuel and Jorge barely had enough time to clasp their hands behind their backs and give the admin the sweetest, most innocent smiles they had.

taffy789 • 19 November 2016 at 2:21 PM

“You look pale, Naji,” Jorge commented as the group finally left the briefing tent. Jorge and Samuel together had managed to heckle out some information from the admin- like, for example, where the rest of the group was waiting- so they headed off in that direction to go start the mission. Naji however, had been left feeling sick and on-edge from the entire admin encounter, and his brain swam again with dark thoughts of the mission’s critical failure.
“Don’t let that guy’s BS bother you dude,” Samuel tried to reassure the boy, “It was pretty crappy of him to make us rely on the brainwashed buffoons like that, but it won’t be bad. If the buffoons try to make us go further or faster than we needed to go, I’ll call them out on it, don’t worry.” He raised his hands up to relax them behind his head, “I’m not exactly too excited about the prospect of those idiots telling us to work harder and be in more danger than we have to either, so dang it if I won’t do everything to prevent that from happening.”
That didn’t make Naji feel any better, he hadn’t even considered that grim idea until just now, when Samuel brought it to his attention-! His face heated up as the ill feeling swelled in him, and he wondered briefly if sick days were a thing you could take when forced to pretend to be a field medic in a fakey war that was downright terrifying and filled with terrifying people with terrifying superpowers…
“Hopefully though,” Jorge added, patting Naji on the back as they all moved forward, “we won’t have to work hard tomorrow!”
“Heck ya, dude,” Samuel grinned, “I’m all for Dia’s Spec-Ops saving our butts, hella.”
As the two matched one another’s wide grins and swooped in for a loud “whoop!” and high five, Naji could only stare, feeling so very, very lost in the happiness. Wanting the same hope his tent mates had in their lives, he voiced, “…What are Spec-Ops?” quietly, as if fearful of his own ignorance.
“Oh yeah, you’re new,” Samuel remarked as he spun around to Naji. “Okay dude,” he explained, his hands moving as if that could supplement his words, “If I’m going to explain Spec-Ops, I kinda have to start lower down the chain of command first. So like, we have front line camp generals, right? And we have admins and managers under them, to help assign missions and manage supplies and stuff. The generals assign admins and managers to take care of the “Four Sectors of Responsibility in War”- er, or some wordy crap the government tries to call it, to make it sound nice or professional or some crap. Basically, everybody is grouped into four classes of duties: defense, reconnaissance, management, and support. Jorge and I are defense, which is basically just attacking and defending, soldier stuff. You, Naji, are in support, ‘cause you’re a healer. Recon is like for intel gathering, for spies and torturers, and management are the pencil pushers with bad powers who get stuck with the desk jobs and assigning duties to people. Like, the sucky admin who was in charge of our briefing? He's probably management who’s also kinda helping out recon, and he’s one of the worser management workers, too.”
Samuel let loose a loud whistle, “Aaaand that basically clears up the chain of command of us lower people, with us grunts at the bottom with our specific sector-alligned admins and managers over us, and with the camp generals over the admins and managers. But then we go one up further.” He nodded, solemnly, “To the leaders.”
“There’s ten of them, but there should really only be nine, and we only really ever see nine of them. And the first one might not even exist.” Jorge added, the numbers being thrown around not meaning anything to Naji and confusing the poor kid more. Naji was even more baffled when Jorge snorted and said, “Also they’re all totally named after like, geometric shapes for some reason.”
“Yeah, and these leaders are basically in charge of the base,” Samuel continued, “they get paired up and the pairs rotate with what sector of responsibility they’re uh, responsible for. They spend like, three months at a time in one sector before rotating to be in charge of a new one. So, the leaders command the camp generals, and make sure everything is running up to standard. The highest leader, Mona, gets orders from the government supposedly, and supposedly gives those orders to Dia for Dia to tell the rest of the leaders, right? And that’s basically the top half of the chain of command, with the government in charge of all of us still, in theory.” A pause, in both the words and the steady steps Samuel was taking forward with the rest of the group. “You following all of this, dude?”
Naji blinked, then nodded, slowly, for once not lying. No, it all seemed familiar to him… Yes, wasn’t there a crash course in this during those few weeks he was at the training school for?
He could barely remember anything from that time, he’d been so afraid, but yet, these concepts did seem to be something he felt acquainted with. So he said, feeling semi-confident in himself, for once, "Yes, I'm following."
“Cool,” Samuel smiled, and resumed both explaining and walking forward with the group onto their destination. “Now, Spec-Ops are a group of like, five people who the leaders can chose to work directly under them, do special missions and stuff. It’s a good job, and the Spec-Ops are like, the elite of the elite, right? You gotta be good to become a Spec-Op,” he frowned, suddenly, “or like, just really good friends with a leader, I guess. There’s uh. Rumors. But that’s neither here or there,” he waved the thought away, moving on, “So, Spec-Ops usually just do what their leader wants them to, ‘cause they only are forced to run like, two missions a month, and they can choose easy ones if they want. But, there’s two famous groups of Spec-Ops that, uh, do more than the others!”
A wide, blaring grin exploded to life on Samuel’s face, “And that’s Mona’s and Dia’s Spec-Ops! When the front lines are open, they’re the ones who are most seen around camps. They both have been given free reign by their leaders to do whatever they want basically, and they come around places like here to check things out! And considering the Spec-Ops we're meeting tomorrow are briefing OUR silly little suicide recon mission,” Samuel exclaimed, “They’re probably Dia’s Spec-Ops!”
“…Which is good?” Naji ventured, feeling clueless.
“It’s great dude,” Jorge laughed, unable to hide the joy with how hard he was smiling, “Dia’s Spec-Ops? They have a reputation of sorts. They tend to work all these crappy recon missions in place of the, uh, soldaditos, ya know? Which is uber nice.”
“You wouldn’t catch anyone else’s Spec-Ops doing that, in a million years,” Samuel nodded, “You wouldn’t catch a leader doing it, either. Actually, you can barely catch anybody who would put their head on the line for a couple of useless brainwashed cannon fodder like the soldaditos are. What Dia's Spec-Ops do? It's more than nice. It’s positively humane.” He smiled, then unexpectedly snorted and rolled his eyes, saying while sounding a tad bit scathing, “And knowing what leader they work for? God, you almost would think Dia hired them solely to make up for all those past sins.”
Jorge frowned at the comment, but said nothing in reply to it. He instead looked at Naji. "So, dude,” he began, cheerfully, “basically what we’re saying is this: No mission tomorrow, most likely!” He grinned, “Ain’t it great?”
Finally understanding, Naji allowed himself to hope. His small smile was an echo of those of his two team mates. “Yep,” he said, softly but filled with a warm, pleasant, plush sort of feeling, “It does sound great. Absolutely great."

awesomeness • 20 November 2016 at 1:03 PM

Annabell quietly ate her pancake as the conversation was again directed into more unpleasant territory. Trying to not draw attention to herself, she made no comment, not one, not even after Quincy agreed to help Riley out with the Eigth division info, or when Izzy tried to commit suicide via pancake asphyxiation. However, to no avail, she soon felt a gaze fall on her, and she stuffed one more bit of pancake into her own mouth before daring to look up-
When Annabell caught the look Riley was giving her, she almost pulled an Izzy and stuffed the rest of her pancake in her mouth to feign an inability to speak. Considering how displeased that seemed to make Riley towards Izzy, however…
She looked elsewhere for help, glancing over at Quincy to see if the boy would be okay with taking up the mantle, but Quincy appeared too busy looking over at Izzy, eyebrows furrowed with looked like equal parts of concern and muted exasperation. Briefly, Annabell wondered if that reaction was particularly… “significant-othery”, but feeling Riley’s apologetic gaze incessantly on her made her save that mystery for another time.
She swallowed what little pancake she had left in her mouth, and then she cleared her throat.
“Well,” Annabell began, allowing her mind to wrap around all those memories best left in the past, where they belonged, “I, uh, ran after Izzy after he ran off, and I found a set of stairs?” She turned to Riley, because addressing a friend was easier than talking towards the near strangers at the table, “Pretty sure I signaled you and Quincy before heading down, with the flashlight? And then when I headed, down, I saw Izzy lying unconscious at the bottom of the stairs, and there was this kid talking…”
She frowned, and her cheeks heated up some.
“Okay, look,” she admitted, moreso to all of the table, her face growing redder with every word spoken, “I understand that everything the kid was saying was obviously a lie and a trick now, but-? At the time, he just looked like-”
Annabell’s breath caught, and she suddenly could even look at anyone around the table. There is was again, that vast feeling of pathos and urgency, that need to protect something small and familiar and so young. Who had the Spence reminded her of, in those first critical moments of their meeting? All wide, childish eyes and helplessness and smallness.
Of course, there had been a child in Annabell’s house, one she had often fed and took care of and played tea party with and had been looking forward to driving to school and taking to the city park when she’d finally learned to drive. But that last part had never happened, because Annabell hadn’t laid eyes on her parents or little sister for three years now.
Her sister would be about eleven now, and Annabell felt disgusting when she couldn’t even hope or pray that her sister was doing well in school or enjoying life, because every prayer she thought about her sister only began and ended with, “I hope to God she doesn’t develop a power”.
Thinking about her family felt like she was being hallowed out with a dull, dull knife, so she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and focused on the available, real present in front of her.
“He just looked like a scared kid,” Annabell continued, blandly, as if she’d only had momentarily paused to find the perfect description and not for any other reason. “He had this story about being sent down to unclog a drain, and he was like, referencing various people and acting very Italian. He also was talking to his urn, which was, um,” she faltered, “strange and sort of off, even when I still thought he was a cute, very lost kid caught up in some very bad things, and not the horrible psychopath he actually turned out to be.” She deadpanned the last part rather skillfully, and then continued on, “Anyway, he told me his name was Spence, but that’s probably a lie, like everything else seemed to be. Then he tried to get me to unclog the drain for him by messing around with the control panel switches, but since he straight-up told me that some of them would have undesirable effects,” she frowned, “of course I wasn’t about to start randomly slamming down levers! I’m not Leon,” she added, joking while also keenly aware that, yes, of course that’s exactly what her friend would’ve done had he been in the situation instead of her. Wow, did she miss him, even if his reckless nature did often leave much to be desired…
“So,” Annabell continued, “the kid started to act, well, not like an innocent kid anymore? He got… creepy. It weirded me out, he kinda reminded me of, well,” she coughed, “Eight?” She glanced over at Quincy, “Not offense to your boss.”
Quincy, who’d been listening attentively to the story thus far, gave a shrug, “I’ve never even met her, but yeah, “creepily weird” sounds pretty accurate.”
Pleased she didn’t offend anyone, Annabell went on, “He kept trying to make me play chance with the levers, but I wasn’t about to do that. Though at one point, I did hit an alarm, just to try to show him I had no idea what I was doing, because often stubborn children need to be appeased in some way-”
Here, Quincy blinked.
“Uh,” he said, shoulders moving with a strange agitation, “you hit an alarm?”
“Yes,” Annabell replied, frowning, “What, did you guys hear it?” She glanced from Riley to Quincy, puzzled.
“Uh,” Quincy squeaked, “kinda.”
Annabell didn’t feel any less confused with that lousy answer, so she paused her story to pose the question to the two boys, “So, then, what was happening with you both during all of this?”
Quincy turned a shade of red, and looked ready to also pull an Izzy and start choking on pancake to avoid speaking any more about the subject, so Annabell turned to Riley to answer her questions instead.

asi • 21 November 2016 at 7:06 PM

It felt like a long time before Raven was able to look away from his neck.
It was when Zach audibly, visibly faltered that she looked up. Her own expression felt somewhat askew in her own surprise. She had a strange thought for a moment that perhaps she could fill in the gap.
But he rejected this thought for her with such a sudden, vicious reaction that she recoiled and in a second sealed the thought and her parted mouth shut.
Only when it was clear that Zach wasn't going to talk any more by himself did she speak. "I'm... Satisfied with that answer, yes," Raven answered slowly, looking down at the idle records in her lap. Their cold facts and numbers didn't appeal to her at all. How was that supposed to reveal anything human at all? She doubted Zach would have been privy to any of it anyway, let alone remember it now...
It was true that he'd better remember IOD. However!
Raven was staring grimly ahead now, into the distance. "We all know about how miserable IOD is."
She knew the statistics, she'd seen troops return to base crippled, with empty spaces, or not at all. There were her own experiences too. The death match from yesterday was still buzzing fresh in her head, the subsequent imprisonment and quiet, suffocating fear of the unknown even moreso. Feelings of helplessness frothed up inside Raven when she remembered how useless she'd been trapped in that bunker, and again when she'd learned the stonecast news of her arm's condition.
These things were still very raw and painful for her, and her nails bit into the lean meat just above each of her elbows, with her arms clasped together the way they were.
She wondered vaguely about the distractions she'd been desperately ignoring, now that they seemed to have stopped. Only a hollow echo persisted.
Raven straightened in her chair for what felt the a hundredth time. She wanted to groan and stretch and perhaps yawn too, but narrowly resisted. It seemed this kind of interrogation didn't really suit her, huh... She tapped a set of nails against the table in some ambiguous rhythm, trying to get the ringing silence out of her head.
"I think it would be better to discuss times where your power was less present," Raven advised him quietly, "rather than recent events in which you relied on it closely, right?"
She'd never been interrogation, but even she knew that. "Powers don't have childhoods, you know. I'm sure that's why it's much more valuable to establish you are who you were a few years ago... Rather than a few weeks ago," she surmised, eyes narrowed- sharp with suspicion. Perhaps she really wasn't sure who she might have been talking to a few weeks ago. How was she to be sure?
"I don't know much about labs, really," she said, leaning back in her chair again. And some of the things Zach had just briefly described had disturbed her, even if it did more or less match her expectations, and Raven wasn't sure she wanted to hear more, but- "But if some things clearly sucked more than others, then you can identify for me what sucked less than-"
She closed her eyes briefly before continuing, "Than the needles or the scientists."
It sounded like a long shot, but Raven was hopeful, that he might find something for her... Something that wasn't so bad as everything else.

taffy789 • 25 November 2016 at 3:23 AM

Yes, Zach could hear Raven talking, but, no, he wasn’t listening, not really.
A distracting, cutting agitation was too busy nestling itself between his shoulder blades, crawling under his skin to make a nest and laying its eggs there while refusing to get the heck out.
The people, crap, the people, those labcoats, those-
He drew in a sharp, instinctual breath of air.
The area, the room, the interrogation- it all carved familiar memories out of his brain and presented them to him on a platter, forcing him to stare down the unsavory thoughts and see them all too clearly.
He tried to close his eyes, to remove himself from the situation, but even behind the darkness of his eyelids, the memory was visible still.
There had been too many times he was put into this exact situation, with power suppressing cuffs around his wrists and being forced to answer inane questions for whatever stupid purpose they were being asked for.
“How have you felt lately?” “Are you experiencing any distress right now?” “How do you feel your sister is doing, right now?”
The words spoken flooded back in a sour wave of nausea that spread over the scene and caused him to shiver with increased, venomous irritation.
No, he had never had a good answer to any of that, not anything but small, muttered replies because really, what had they expected him to say? Obviously, they’d expected him to say what they’d wanted to hear, but figuring out what that was had been confusing and impossible and- considering the displeased faces of the past labcoats who’d interviewed him- something he’d never managed to accomplish. It was annoying to say the least, being asked what felt like a million questions and never knowing what answer was wanted. It was much like his current interrogation, except the ones of his past included more prodding and fake, too soft, imploring voices that were often followed by various “tests” which only provided various degrees of continued discomfort.
The muscles in Zach’s right arm twitched slightly as the ghost of a light electric shock rocketed through his veins and left small spasms in its wake.
Remembering this all, it left a very, very bad taste in his mouth. The bitterness stayed, and he grit his teeth at stupidity of it all, of those effing labcoats constantly prodding him and tying him down and sometimes even apologizing or trying to smile- all pretending to feel sorry for him- before stabbing him with something that flooded through his blood like a malignant, soul-sucking poison.
The people running the labs he was at, they each acted the same, and Zach could remember that perhaps more lucidly than he would’ve liked. The scientists were all cold, groping gloved hands and mechanical medical procedures and sterilized smells, and they each treated him with the same curt quickness and efficiently too- rough and rushed and impersonal.
They only thing strikingly different about each he’d met was how they’d ignored him, using music or small talk to forget his existence during those lengthier needle sticks when he was stuck watching the blood fly from that familiar tube in his arm. But when they had to refer back to him in front of him, they never failed to do it in that strange, numerical way that avoided any real names and always made Zach think that he wasn’t-

wasn’t-



Raven tapping against the desk and speaking in a sudden, gentler tone caused Zach to jump, the auditory change catching him off guard and throwing him more visibly off edge.
When he looked back at his assistant, there was no doubt something wild that had returned to his eyes, something hard and feral and caged and completely willing to bite off the girl’s head if she even dared to open her mouth to ask another question.
Then, without warning, what seemed to be a gradual recognition set in, as if the leader were remembering where he was, who he was talking with. After a few heavy breaths, Zach’s pupils undilated, his heart beat audibly slowed, and after a long measure of time his throat cleared, once, so he could rasp out, “...There wasn’t a lot that didn’t suck.”
There was another stretch of silence.
“But,” Zach said when his brain recovered from the lingering stress and finally thought of a good answer, “if I had to pick something…”
He trailed off, before deciding with finality, “… There were a few times that a candy bar would arrive with the meals they sent to the rooms.” He untensed, and then sighed before muttering, grumpily, “I… really liked those.”

awesomeness • 2 December 2016 at 9:14 PM

The rest of the walk was filled with Samuel and Jorge doing bad, mocking impressions of the admin, snorting with laughter at every joke the other made. Naji listened but did not join in, all too content to simply walk forward and enjoy the feeling of lessened despair, the fuzzy feeling of hope vibrating throughout every limb.
It was nice.
“Hey, look who finally decided to show up!”
But, like all good things, the feeling came to its jarring, premature end.
Gabriel greeted Naji first, clapping a hard hand to his back and saying, congenially, “It’s nice to have you on the mission, buddy, even if you’re a bit late to the party!”
As Naji muttered out a pathetic, “Uh, same, you too”, to that, Gabriel turned to awkwardly frown towards the other two guys standing behind Naji.
“And Samuel, Jorge,” Gabriel said, shifting slightly, “it was surprising to hear you guys wanted to join us! Uh, really surprising and unexpected, but-” he gave a small, candid smile their way, “it’s still nice to have you two seasoned warriors on board to help us kick some Falchion butt.”
When Naji twisted his head around to see their replies to that, he caught glimpse of Jorge’s silent, tight smile back and also of Samuel quickly crossing his arms across his chest, tensing up.
Samuel spoke first. “Given it’s a recon mission, I hope you weren’t dead set on a battle actually occurring,” he snapped, “because that kinda defeats the purpose of a recon mission, you know.”
Naji looked back towards Gabriel in time to catch the fall of that smile and hear the clearing of his throat.
“Uh, yes, it does, but given the debriefing we had,” Gabriel countered, “it’s safe to say we might run into a few Falchions in the area they’re sending us to. I’m only considering the possibilities, here.”
“Sure you are,” Samuel said, dismissing Gabriel’s rebuttal as if the boy’s words had held no real meaning. He then continued, “Speaking of briefings, we just received ours, and I need to compare notes with you.”
“Uh,” Gabriel, blinking in surprise, dropped his hand from Naji’s shoulder blades. “Sure, but we need to make it quick, we’re already pretty behind schedule.”
Free from Gabriel’s grasp, Naji quickly removed himself from anywhere near the awkward, painful situation that was soon to follow Samuel and Gabriel trying to have a civil chat with one another…
He walked forward, to go join the others in the group who sat nearby, next to their gear and waving at him to come sit with them.
“Naji!”
Naji stiffened, this time prepared for the crushing bear trap of Amy’s hugs.
It left him crumpled and broken and breathless despite any preparation, however, and Amy grinned as she released him, laughing as she flicked him playfully on top of his head and accidentally sent his forehead bursting with pain.
“That’s for being late, silly, we’ve been DYING to start this mission, hun!”
Naji pressed a palm to the sore spot on his head while whimpering out a quiet plea of, “Please don’t use that word, please,”, but Amy’s deafening, sparkling grin made him mute in her ears.
She suddenly ruffled his hair, winking at him while saying, “Don’t you dare be late for tomorrow’s mission, you hear? I would totally like, be mad at you forever!” before finally letting him go from her clutches.
Naji limped away as quick as he could, making sure to throw a hurried, “Don’t worry, I’ll be on time tomorrow!” as he escaped to the outskirts of the group’s little circle of bags and bodies.
He tugged his small backpack of his shoulders and set it down away from the last of the group, away from the other Espada girl and Geraldo, and especially away from Geraldo’s mute twin sister that hadn’t yet said a word to Naji and probably hated him for getting her name wrong the first day he met her…
Naji recalled this event and winced, and then because he hated himself apparently, he dared to look back towards the mute girl.
She sat near her brother and the other girl, watching them chat animatedly but not joining in the conversation herself. Her shoulder-lengthened hair and long bangs swayed slightly every time she moved her head an inch, and the black, glossy strands of her hair glared under the light from the newly risen sun above. Her hair was all he could see, until her head still for a split second before spinning around to stare directly in the boy’s direction.
Naji yelped in surprise and ducked his head down to fiddle with his bag, much like how a frightened ostrich would stick its head in the sand to avoid a rushing cheetah. He continued to unzip and zip every pocket on his bag, so preoccupied with avoiding the girl that he didn’t notice she had walked over and sat down next to him until he finally looked up to see if she was still staring at him and found himself staring at her nose instead.
Crying out in surprise, Naji scuttled backwards on his knees before tripping up and landing on his back with a soft “ow”.
He laid there for a moment, staring up at the sun and wallowing in his own sorrow. Only when a voice guffawed and a pair of hands helped him up did Naji regain any sense of self and ability to move his limbs.
“What a nasty spill, huh?” a male voice, Jorge’s voice, said as he absentmindedly brushed the sand off of Naji’s shoulders. “What spooked ya?”
Naji remained silent, unable to say anything about the recent turn of events, about the muted girl with the vendetta against him and the small, black almond-shaped eyes that kept… staring at him without ever looking away-!!!
Jorge registered the silence on Naji’s part, and so he waved away the previous conversation and moved on, saying, “Yeah, anyway, I ditched Sammy back there. He’s basically trying to mission squeeze info out of Gabe but is super paranoid about the exact details he’s receiving, and so he’s questioning everything. I listened for a while but kinda left because, well, there’s no arguing with Sammy when he gets like this, right? It’s not worth it man.” Grimacing, Jorge shoved his hands in his pockets and kicked at a pile of sand that the impact of Naji’s fall had created. “Anyway, dude,” Jorge said, peering over Naji’s shoulder, “who’s the girl?”
The girl was staring at the two with a puzzled look on her face, and Naji began sweating while wondering of how much of what Jorge said had she heard or taken offense too. It did sound like Samuel was browbeating her squad’s leader into going over every detail of the mission, after all, so he wouldn’t be surprised if she grew more displeased with him over that…
Since Naji still hadn’t given any sort of suitable reply to him, Jorge took matters into his own hands.
He approached the girl.
“Hi,” he greeted amicably, and Naji paled at the sheer brashness. Jorge, ignorant of his own interpersonal fumbles, smiled and held out a hand for the girl to shake, saying, “I think we were introduced during the small talk, but I don’t really remember your name. What was it, again..?”
Naji almost fainted.
Jorge should’ve known better than that, he really should’ve known better than to simply just walk up to someone and admit to something as heinous and irresponsible as forgetting a name-! Oh, he could almost cover his eyes and cry out in fear of what awkward heck could possibly occur as a result of such a stupid fumble! He cringed back and watched in horrified anticipation of the girl’s surely offended and ill-tempered reply-!
The girl met Jorge’s handshake, and though she blinked in confusion, she still said, clearly, “Hola.”

taffy789 • 2 December 2016 at 9:15 PM

It was Jorge’s turn to blink in surprise.
“Hablas ingles?” he asked, his Spanish so languid and measured that even Naji could catch that familiar phrase.
The girl’s eyes brightened, her head immediately perking up.
“No,” she said with a shake of her head, and then rattled off a string of sounds Naji couldn’t begin to even sort out the words from.
Jorge’s expression was one of immense concentration, and he screwed up his expression tighter as he replied, again slowly and one word at a time, “Mi… espanol es, uh, mal. Muy mal- yeah, haha. But, uh, pero, uh, pero. Yo se, uh,” Jorge faltered here, and muttered something under his breath that sounded like “palabras”, which by the annoyed tone of his voice Naji would bet money was a curse of some kind. “Uh, mismo?” Jorge ended, sounding almost hopeful.
The girl immediately snorted, and her following giggle sounded like small, tinkling bells. Naji then listened, enraptured, to the smooth, even waves of Spanish that flowed out of her mouth. The words lept out, one after another as fast as lightning, and yet as soothing as the sound of water lapping against the coast of Sand Beach in Acadia. He stood, dumbfounded and unable to catch a single word as it flew past, but he couldn’t stop listening and trying, trying so hard to understand.
But he wasn’t the only one having that trouble, it seemed.
Jorge’s frown deepened. “No comprendo,” he stated, those words rolling easily off his tounge, as if it were a phase he’d used many a time before. “Comprendas ingles?”
The girl shook her head again, and she said, slower and softer this time, pronouncing every word with great care, “No. No lo comprendo. Pero…” With that, she stood up, flipped around, and took off.
Watching her go, Jorge gave a grinning sigh and shook his head. “Sucks she doesn’t understand English, ‘cause then at least one of us could understand the other.” He then threw back his head and groaned out, “Ugh, god, I fail. Dude, I gotta get Sammy over here to do this sorta thing for me, I can’t believe I’m such a fail at my own culture…”
Naji blinked, recovering from the unexpected Spanish, and also shaking off the sound of said Spanish, and also the cutting, uber embarrassing realization that, no, the mute girl hadn’t been mad at him, in fact, she’d never even been able to talk to him…
He flushed, and didn’t want to think about that any more than he had to, so he directed a question towards Jorge instead. “Where’d you learn Spanish?”
“Middle school and some high school, mainly,” Jorge shrugged, “And then it became useful here, so I had to relearn a few phases most should know to get by. But other than that?” He laughed, “Zilch experience. Which sucks, ‘cause my folks back home were practically fluent in it, they just never thought it important to teach me? But, crap, were they wrong. I mean, who wouldn’t want to speak two languages, really?”
“Haha,” Naji answered, sweating slightly, “you’re right, who wouldn’t want to speak two languages, especially from birth, haha, right…” He was suddenly overcome with a gapping, hallow sickness. If Jorge noticed anything odd about Naji’s now pale skin and sullen, pained expression, he couldn’t comment on it because the Spanish speaking girl had decided to then return with her twin brother in tow.
“Hi,” Geraldo greeted the two quietly, not meeting their eyes as he shoved his hands in the pockets of his khaki shorts. He continued, looking at the two from the corners of his eyes, “You need me to talk for Raquel?”
His accent fell thick and heavy on Naji’s ears, but it didn’t hit as nearly as hard as the revelation of the mute girl’s name. Raquel? Isn’t that what he’d guessed, from the beginning? So he hadn’t awkwardly called that stunningly intimidating girl the wrong name all those nights ago? He hadn’t fussed everything up?
Naji could've almost wept; the new knowledge was so beautiful, so refreshing, like an oasis rising from a desert to greet a dehydrated traveler.
“Yeah, hi, Geraldo right?” Jorge said, the only one speaking, for Naji was struck dumb with his own surging thoughts of salvation from embarrassment. Jorge waited for Geraldo to confirm his name before smiling and saying, “Cool, nice to greet ya. So, uh,” an unhappy sort of expression momentarily crossed his face, before fully disappearing, “your sister never learned English? And uh, so, how long were you at your training facility for..?”
Geraldo turned to Raquel, speaking to her in quick, sharp Spanish and gesturing with his hands as he did so. Raquel blinked once before replying back, her face seeming to have stolen the unhappiness present on Jorge’s only moments ago.
“I was at La Academia for,” Geraldo shrugged, passively, “years. My sister, however,” he stole a glance at her face, and then quickly looked away. “Lab,” he explained, curtly, “until a year ago, when she came to La Academia for IOD training.”
Jorge’s cheeks sucked in for a moment, and Naji flinched at how slack the guy’s face went, but out of nowhere he recovered twice as fast as the emotion had originally betrayed him.
“Hey, nice to have you both here, then,” Jorge nodded, and he made direct eye contact with Raquel, giving an especially large smile, “It’s good you guys got here alright, those… places can be… pretty tough I know. It can be hard, right?” He paused, then added, softer, “Especially the labs.”
“La Academia was not very bad,” Geraldo muttered to himself before translating Jorge’s words to his sister.
Raquel had already reached out and met Jorge’s hand to shake it, but when she understood his words, her eyes met his and widened, if ever so slightly. Something genuinely warm blazed in her dark irises, flaming and surprised and setting everything alight. Naji noticed this, like he noticed the renewed vigor with which Raquel gripped Jorge’s hand with, as if she were meeting a famous movie star or some kind of living legend for the first time.
Jorge’s smile widened, and he dropped Raquel’s hand after a moment, only to move directly into a flamboyant, dramatic bow to the girl, “Anyway, nice to officially talk to you, Raquel!” He frozen doubled over mid-bow while Geraldo translated, and then he snapped straight up when the Spanish ceased, exclaiming excitedly, “Me llamo es Jorge! And-” here Naji was nudged by Jorge’s elbow, and Naji realized his own muteness throughout this entire rollercoaster of introduction and Spanish and deep realizations about language differences. Blushing furiously, Naji did the first thing that popped into his head and mimicked Jorge, bowing forward and snapping up so fast that his back audibly popped, and he squeaked out, through the sudden stab of pain, “Mi llama es Naji!”
A wild snort of air blew through Raquel’s nose at this exclamation, and she quickly flashed her hand up to cover the bottom half of her face, holding down the giggles from arising up. Through her snorting laughter, she looked up at the bright red Naji and spoke something that made Geraldo frown.
“Not saying that,” he muttered to himself before turning to Raquel and speaking to her privately. He turned back to the other two boys. “I think the others want to go.” He said this curtly, then pulled Raquel away to rejoin the others.
Raquel waved as she left, and Jorge replied likewise, and he nudged the frozen with embarrassment Naji until he gave a small, pathetic wave of his own hand.
After that was done, Jorge laughed and turned back to Naji, “Oh my god, dude. You called yourself a llama.”
“Please don’t remind me,” Naji whimpered, unable to resist the urge to shove his palms over his eyes and never remove them. If he couldn’t see the world, he reasoned, he certainly wouldn’t exist in it…
“Aw, come on,” Jorge teased, “at least Raquel said it was cute~”
The fingers of Naji’s palms spread apart, ever so slightly, so he could peer at Jorge and gauge how serious he looked. He kept his palms still covering most of his face, however, because now his cheeks shone even more red, and he didn’t even have a sunburn yet-!
“…She was making fun of me?” Naji ventured, his words chattering nervously as they stepped cautiously from the safety of his mouth. “Or are you..?”
Jorge frowned at this reply, his teasing expression quickly fading. He rubbed one hand on the back of his neck, saying, “I mean, I was teasing there a bit, but her? I mean, uh. Uh, well, no? Wasn’t really what I’d thought, anyway, but-”
Naji hid his face more completely in his hands at that “but”, and Jorge jumped in alarm, exclaiming, “No! Hey, dude! I’m a sucky translator, but I like to think I’m somewhat accurate, okay? She probably wasn’t making fun of you, probably! I think! Uh, ‘sides,” he clapped his hands together and motioned towards the rest of the group, which had begun to collect themselves into a large circle back near the rest of the gear, “I think it’s about time to go, so uh, we should do that, cool?”
Hastily, Jorge began pulling Naji in the direction of the rest of the group.
Naji allowed himself to be pulled along, a sick sensation twisting up in his gut after all that had just transpired. He hadn’t ever thought there would come a time where he would be grateful for a mission, but considering the rollercoaster of constant embarrassment he’d just been forced to ride, the mission seemed like a cakewalk compared to the constant wild ups and downs of social interaction.

asi • 4 December 2016 at 7:59 AM

When Annabell faltered at description, Riley suffered a sudden sense of déjà vu, tugging back to a time in the subterranean sewage chamber when he'd first spoke; where the kid had stiffened, turned, had said something- unimportant- in reply with an ostentatious swagger. Then as he revealed his face, the kid's eyes had thinned, and finally, his smile had widened, stretching at the corners to, now in Riley's mind's eye, an almost unnatural, ghoulish extent, like his face was about to tear itself apart, splitting gruesomely up to his little Italian ears...
Riley shuddered. It really didn't take a psych eval to see that there was something truly and grievously off about that kid.
But there was also the acute feeling that Riley was missing something here, a truth that hovered temptingly just beyond the touch of his fingertips. He brought them up to the side of his head and massaged his temple firmly, trying to think.
"I commend you for not going crazy with the switches, and think from now on our official stance for dealing with stubborn children should be strictly not humoring them," Riley commented with a slightly strained expression, as his brain was still hard at work, trying to find what he'd missed.
He glanced down at his sticky, golden pancake, shining with syrup, and decided maybe some sugar would help. Observing the slightly bluing hue of his more ambitious team member's face, Riley wisely cut himself a more bite-sized portion and placed it in his mouth, rewarded immediately by the warm sensation of the liquid sugar beginning to dissolve on his tongue.
He thought some more about how Annabell had just described the Spence kid, and, with his pancake piece steadily sliding down his throat, sat up with a sudden jolt of his chair- and then instantly began to choke.

Izzy had just claimed victory in his hard-fought campaign against his pancake, as the last of it was successfully pushed down his throat, albeit in a fairly painful lump, when his leader started choking as if on cue.
Izzy swallowed forcefully until he was staring at the coughing Riley with a clear passageway of his own, wondering if perhaps the Buddhists were right after all and karma was really at play in this universe.
Then, as Riley slowly recovered, swallowing himself, Izzy looked back down at his plate and pretended to chew on thin air, now rather indisposed to give the strange, sugary dish another try. While it had not tasted poorly, his own recklessness with it had caused him injury... He eyed what was left of it warily. It was also a great way to avoid the eyes of the leader who was blinking them clear.
At least, Izzy had planned to do so, until the guy slapped his hands down on the table loudly, causing the tracker to instead look up right away. Between snorted laughter, Riley managed to convey three words to the baffled table of onlookers; "Italian. Plumber. Mario."
Izzy only raised an eyebrow in reply, questioning whether the new leader had lost it already.


Things seemed to have eased down into a more settled mood. For a while there, while she was talking, Raven had perceived that he didn't seem to be reacting to any external stimuli. His eyes had appeared unseeing, or perhaps looking into another world. She had almost begun to worry, if Zach had gone dark on her- but...
He saw her again, and slowly but steadily, his breathing began to decelerate. Everything but the dryness of his throat when he spoke then seemed normal again.
As the tension that had been tightly strung as a loaded and drawn bow ebbed away, Raven let out a tiny sigh of relief as she gathered up the papers she'd brought in with her, slipping them together to make them simpler to carry.
"I see, well," Raven was about to spout something completely meaningless and conclusive in order to quickly quit the room without being completely abrupt. But it was then that she remembered, something of the utmost importance, that in an instant turned the meaning of his last words for her on their head.
Just a few days ago, when they'd first trekked out her into this sweltering, desiccated land, Zach had once appeared ready to lay down and die, and yet her last, desperate act seemed to turn the tables, picking him back up onto his feet!
The edges around her eyes softened a little. "You... You really like candy, don't you? Ha," with her head bowed to hide her slight smile, she stood. Some winding dark locks that had fallen free from her ponytail hung down over her face, until she straightened, tucking them behind one ear.
It was funny, but she felt like of all the things she'd learned about Zach until now, Raven had never really discovered what he liked. It had all felt more like recording a list of things he disliked or annoyed him. Except for one thing, which she definitely was going to take his slippery and fickle power's word for... Definitely not.
She paused by the door, glancing over her shoulder to simply tell him. "Don't worry, I'll see you again soon," before slipping out, the door closing behind her with a less subtle clang.
Then, leaning her back against its battered surface, Raven gave a big exhale. Truth be told, she'd been in an enormous hurry to leave that room, though she'd made every effort not to appear so. She didn't want anyone to be under the impression that she was one to be easily psyched out, but...
When he'd looked up and caught her with those wild animal eyes, primed to lash out with the most visceral aggression, that's when she'd heard it.
Ringing inside her skull had been someone's mangled, tortured screams.
Raven needed a dose of Aspirin as soon as possible.

taffy789 • 6 December 2016 at 8:58 PM

Annabell flushed slightly and could only nod after Riley suggested how the team could start handling malicious children from now on.
Gosh, would that had been a nice rule to have laid down for the team BEFORE the mission…
To counteract the red gnawing away at her cheeks, Annabell cut a sliver of her own pancake and shoved it into her mouth.
She began chewing.
Riley began choking.
Springing up in her chair, Annabell gulped down the piece of pancake she’d was chewing in her mouth, but before she could even open her mouth to voice her concern, she heard her own words flying from somebody else’s mouth-
“Four, are you okay?” Hand braced on the edge of the table, Quincy looked poised to jump up and give the leader the Heimlich if the need be it.
When Riley recovered and coughed out his…. revelation, however, Quincy deflated and relaxed back into his seat.
“Uh?” Annabell coughed a bit of her own, “…Yes, a lot like Mario, I suppose? If Mario was, well, absolutely deranged and fond of trying to drown people?”
“… From the sound of this creepy Italian kid,” Quincy decided to pipe up, “maybe I’m glad I was stuck upstairs for most of this mission?”
“It-” Annabell said, and she winced as the bruise on her shoulders cried out with a sharp twang of pain-“It certainly was not fun, I can say that much.” She looked up, and met Quincy’s eyes and questioned, “I’m guessing you and Riley were attacked by that water feral on the way down, right?”
Quincy gave a shrug. “Yep, it was… an experience? More threats of being drowned on our end, though considering the water was kind of… her? The attempted drowning was-” He made a slight face, as if recalling a particularly unpleasant memory, “… more gross than frightening?” He then suddenly hit his palm against the table, in a similar attention-grabbing manner as Riley just had done. He said, forcefully but with a light tone, “But uh, hey, what happened to us isn’t worth talking about. It wasn’t that important.”
“Well, I don’t have much more to say on my end,” Annabell frowned in reply, “And I’m not sure if brainstorming who that kid was or why he was down there would do much good either, since I truly don’t know what to think of it? We could pick apart every detail, but really, what would we be able to come up with other than a kid acting out a very strange and wrong interpretation of the Mario games?” She said this, glum-faced, and looked over towards Riley for direction.



At Raven’s statement, Zach frowned. “Yes. I do.” He blinked, off-put by the slight amusement present in his assistant’s tone, and he straightened in his seat, determined to figure out what part of his enjoyment of sweets was so worth mocking.
After a short period of deliberation, he couldn’t find anything wrong with it, so he just shot back a rhetorical question of his own. "Doesn’t everyone like candy?” he asked, frown deepening, but Raven was already up and gone and heading for the door.
With the empty chair now staring at him from the other side of the table, the room seemed so much more smaller, somehow. The feeling resonated for two seconds before he realized with a start that, crap, he was still chained to the table, he wasn’t out yet-
“Wait,” he croaked, surprised by the urgency in his own voice, but Raven had already shut the door behind her, and the room was left cold and emptied of any other living presence.
Zach's breathing hiked again, if ever so slightly.

As Raven relaxed against the door, Tabs turned away from the laptop and rose one eyebrow at the assistant.
Mari followed suit, though looking more concerned for the girl.
Tabs spoke up, “You all done with the interrogation?” She then tapped Mari on her forearm, and the girl stood up, quickly walking to the other door to open it and herd Jaurez and LG back inside.
“It could’ve went better, but Fiver is about as difficult as I remember him to be, and as long as you determine he’s him,” Tabs shrugged, “I’m okay with that. Not that my opinion matters much in whatever case, seeing you have the final call on this situation, given your position and all..."
She paused for a second, listening intently as LG and Jaurez filed back into the room, conversationally arguing about some inane, pointless thing.
Their conversation was quickly deemed to hold no interest to her, so she nodded to herself and began speaking again to Raven. “There is one more thing, however. The last part of the interrogation, according to copy of the checklist you’re holding.”
Picking up her own copy of the checklist from the desk, Tabs reread the bottom item and smiled slightly in amusement. “It’s a rather… creative way of going about things, I'll give it that. And is apparently designed to see if the supposed feral will show their true violent colors when faced with perceived threats. We’ve already drawn straws to see who’s going to do it, but I wanted to make sure you're a hundred percent on what's about to happen before you get too shocked.” Tabs rose her eyes from the paper, looked over at Jaurez and LG, standing now quietly by, at the ready, and then she looked back to Raven for the final confirmation.
“Sound good to you?”

jello • 6 December 2016 at 9:02 PM

.